Loyalty Begins in the Computer-Savvy Home
Supermarkets’ loyalty card programs take on different guises depending on how actively grocers want to manipulate the data they’ve collected on shoppers and their purchases. Some are used for nothing more than temporary price reductions for anyone who holds a card. Others have advanced to target values to select customers based on the kind or amount of products purchased.
Supermarket and mass merch chain executives rank frequent shopper programs as among the most effective devices for moving product and overall store sales. Only targeted direct mail works better, according to a poll of retailers conducted by Cornell University’s Food Industry Management Program.
Food store loyalty programs are gaining an online dimension as chains test a variety of systems supporting online couponing. A&P Supermarkets is testing a paperless coupon system in which shoppers choose price-off values on their home PCs and trasmit them back to the A&P. The values are automatically deducted at checkout when members have their cards swiped on their next shopping visit.
“This gives the customer an immediate discount on the very next shopping trip, without paper or coupons. We think it’s great,” says A&P vp marketing and corporate affairs Andy Carrano.
A&P is testing the system – devised by Norwalk, CT-based Inter-Act Systems – this quarter in more than a hundred stores in metro New York and Philadelphia. It aims to improve on online coupon programs that have a paper component, says Carrano. Catalina Marketing’s Web Bucks, for example, requires users to print out the values from their PCs and take the sheet into the store to receive coupons to use on their next trip.
Inter-Act maintains its system has a leg up on other Net-based couponing systems such as Planet U, because PC-less shoppers can still take part by accessing Inter-Act kiosks in-store. Company cfo Richard Vinchesi claims Inter-Act coupon terminals are now installed in 1,900 stores nationwide.
