Everyone likes the idea of something for nothing, however, where loyalty cards are concerned, the phrase ‘It’s too good to be true’ may hit the nail on the head.
Loyalty cards came into common use in the mid 1990’s, a stroke of marketing genius which saw supermarket giants market shares entirely unbalanced and a terrifying customer retention. This galvanised the opposing chains into action and in just two years loyalty cards were rife.

Tesco and Sainsbury battled head to head, Safeway briefly stepped in but retreated to no mans land, later being aquired by Wm Morrisons and Boots stomped all over the concept. Each promising their own advantages, each touting their perks as discounts and bonuses for loyalty and for each promise we sold our souls, arming them with ways to make us spend more money, allowing them lead us into temptation with extra points and lower prices.

Now the face of shopping may have changed forever. Each of us has given the much needed market research data about our habits, if we live alone or are on a diet if we eat meat or live on convenience foods. In fact, they’ll know what you’ve been up to if you buy a pregnancy test and what the result was if you start buying nappies. Then they’ll target you, with coupons and extra points vouchers, tempting you to buy more expensive brands than you usually might, or to wean your baby on a more expensive food, which if your child likes, you’ll buy more often and they’ll reap the reward on the profit. Genius!

Our shopping habits are hoarded on computers and sometimes sold to others for greater market power and we agree to that.

Generally the power lies very much with the shop. The card holder is targeted and tormented, given incentives and persuasions to buy what the store needs to shift or to move the customer up a brand level.

It’s rare that these cards will offer enough to the user to warrant the sale of information but there just a few which make it worthwhile if you don’t mind your preferred toilet paper type being bandied around.
Tesco have a catalogue of offers to choose from, other than simply cashing the coupons instore against your groceries. In the catalogue, your coupons are worth 4x as much, so £5 of coupons gives you £20 of treats in the catalogue.
I thought I had managed well to get breakdown cover for two people on two vehicles using my coupons, until I read on MoneySavingExpert.com about those who had new cars as a result of super clever offers shopping. Changing their eating habits to suit whatever maximised their points and taking the resulting coupons to the car chain involved, driving away with brand new vehicles and with less than two years grocery shopping. Every penny recouped in a car.

Tesco hold a significant 32% market share (compared to 16% each for Sainsburys and Asda), the exchange for the brand new cars which slipped off the forecourts via Clubcard vouchers, until the supplier Motorpoint, ceased their cooperative with Tesco in 2008.
Still, with record profits in the region of 2.8 billion this time last year and the strongest loyalty card legacy, I doubt it made much of a dent.

Boots have a whole legion of shoppers who sniff out the bargains and how best to spend on each item, maximising coupon returns and discounts. A recent example was the 97p sachet of Pantene conditioner, which yielded a 100 point return on the Boots Advantage card, a profit of 3p. By purchasing ten Pantene sachets, I could achieve a return of 1,000 Boots points to make my originally intended purchase, technically getting the sachets free of charge and a 30p profit. In a further manoeuvre of super savvy shopping, if those purchases were broken into groups of £5 or slightly more, a coupon was given out which entitled the bearer to £5.00 off Boots own No.7 products.
If you had originally intended to buy a pack of No.7 face wipes (5.50) and a bottle of No.7 cellulite body lotion(£5.00) you would ultimately transfer £9.70 into 1,000 points on your card, spend a further 50p and leave with £20.50 of products.

The loyalty card could prove to be more useful than it was intended with such detailed knowledge of offers and loopholes, turning the previously unrewarding cards back into the two way street we were originally led to believe they were.

Tags: discount, find a deal, loyalty card, money saving, shopping, special offers