enpyre
I took a grad level marketing class as an undergrad in my time at my university and remember my professor mentioning this very same paper. Always found it fascinating, and at the time I was working at a bakery part time as well. Pitched the idea to them, they implemented, but the gains were marginal. Although, I suspect because business went down simultaneously during that period that no gain or no noticeable change could be seen as something of a positive, because everything else was in decline. So, yeah, I guess you would say it has real world application.
its also a really easy to demonstrate idea. I bring it up every time i encounter a loyalty card, just because I find it so damn interesting and remember the exact moment that my professor told us about this, eye opening example.