Retail Systems/Microsoft/BT Expedite/Retalix Loyalty ...download.microsoft.com/.../Retail-Systems-Loyalty-Roundtable-Jan… · loyalty roundtable review The time: ... loyalty/CRM

DDaavviidd DDoobbssoonn,, MMiiccrroossoofftt

David Dobson is the

industry manager

responsible for Microsoft

Corp’s worldwide store

systems and e-commerce

strategy in the retail

industry. This involves

building its five year plan

sales and marketing plan

and working with the

internal product teams to

ensure the products

evolve over time to

meet the needs of this

market. Previously, David

headed the Store

Systems and Compete

teams in Microsoft

EMEA’s retail group,

during which time it grew

market share across the

major subsidiaries.

TTaannyyaa BBoowweenn,, BBTT

Tanya Bowen has been a

consultant at BT

Expedite (BT’s retail

division) for 14 years,

specialising in CRM,

multi-channel and

business strategy. Her

retail CRM clients, from

both North America and

the UK, include Chanel,

Henri Bendel, Giorgio

Armani, Jaeger, Austin

Reed and Bhs.

Tanya’s focus has been

on delivering

incremental Return On

Investment on CRM

solutions and, more

recently, on realising the

benefits afforded by

multi-channel CRM at UK

fashion retailers.

DDrr NNiiccoollaa MMiillllaarrdd,, BBTT

Dr Nicola Millard’s mission

in life is to make

customer experiences

better for both

customers and the

employees delivering

them. She has worked

both within BT’s

operational customer

service organisation and

with retail companies to

ensure that they put the

‘relationship’ into

‘customer management’.

She looks at how the

human factor can

become central to the

development and success

of a customer experience

using a combination of

psychology, technology

and futurology.

PPaauullaa PPaarraavveecccchhiioo,,

MMiiccrroossoofftt EEMMEEAA

As the EMEA managing

director for the

distribution and services

industry at Microsoft,

Paula Paravecchio is

responsible for driving

the EMEA time zone

industry strategy for

growth in the retail,

hospitality and

consumer goods

verticals. Paula’s focus

is on customer and

partner engagement,

adoption of industry

solutions in the

industry verticals,

and supporting

EMEA’s efforts in

existing accounts and

emerging markets.

SSiimmoonn JJoonneess,, RReettaalliixx UUKK

Simon Jones started

Retalix UK in 2000 and

the company’s UK

presence now covers

three of the big four

food retailers, plus a

strong base in fuel and

mixed format retailing,

accounting for around

4,000 stores with over

50,000 PoS terminals.

Simon has some 28

years experience dealing

with retailers of all

formats from food,

fashion department

stores, electrical, DIY, to

fuel and hospitality,

working in both the

hardware and software

solutions sides of the

supplier market.

sponsored by

Synchronized Retail

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TThhee ttiimmee:: Wednesday, 28 January 2009 TThhee vveennuuee:: The Rookery, London

TThhee aaiimm:: To look at how retailers can drive loyalty in the 21st century.

The roundtable panellists, a mix of retailers and solution providers, also

discussed the challenges facing retail organisations around customer loyalty

and retention and examined how technology can help overcome and

address these issues

Retail Systems/Microsoft/BTExpedite/Retalix Loyalty Roundtable

20 February - March 2009

20-25-roundtable_ver 2.qxd 25/02/2009 12:20 Page 1

February - March 2009 21

feature l loyalty roundtable review

Shoppers are today faced with

overwhelming choice in where to

buy, making it harder than ever to

earn a customer’s loyalty. Moreover, as

retail faces the full force of the economic

crisis, consumers are increasingly

concerned about how much they are

spending and, in turn, the way they are

shopping is changing. It’s no longer enough,

however, to offer the cheapest price on

the High Street, as the internet will

inevitably undercut this.

So how do you drive loyalty in the 21st

century? The breakfast roundtable aimed

to answer this question and also create

discussion on the challenges facing retail

organisations around customer loyalty and

retention. It also looked to examine how the

effective implementation of technology

can help address these challenges. In

attendance were: Arun Glendinning,

financial services - product manager, B&Q;

Sharon Peters, programme manager - retail

systems, Marks & Spencer; Richard Jones,

head of commercial systems, Waitrose;

Mike Wilks; integration programme

manager, Mosaic; Paula Paravecchio,

managing director, distribution and services

industry, Microsoft EMEA; Simon Jones,

sales director, Retalix; Tanya Bowen, senior

CRM consultant, BT Expedite; David

Dobson, worldwide industry manager, store

systems, Microsoft; Boaz Mishaan, vice

president, international sales, Retalix.

The chairman, Dr Nicola Millard,

customer experience futurologist, BT

Expedite, which helps its customers to

deliver integrated multi-channel solutions,

kicked the roundtable off by casting an eye

over the current state of the market. “One

of the things that BT finds is some people

are saying that loyalty is dead, which is an

intriguing challenge for us. Is there such a

thing as a loyal customer and what’s in it

for them? Chuck in a credit crunch and

you’ve got a very interesting market.”

Dr Millard cited recent research from

Loudhouse Research and RightNow

Technologies, which provides “some quite

scary statistics.” In the UK market, they

polled 1,000 adults and found that 48 per

cent of them said they were going to

reduce their spending and 88 per cent were

likely or very likely to take their business

elsewhere on the basis of a poor customer

experience. Meanwhile, 82 per cent of

consumers believe that during the current

economic climate, organisations must listen

and act on customer feedback in order to

retain business, while 74 per cent are less

likely to do business with an organisation if

their feedback is ignored. “So, we have that

challenge - our customers nowadays are

very sensitive to value for money and price

but they are still looking for fantastic levels

of customer service,” said Dr Millard.

Where, then, does that leave

loyalty/CRM programmes? A 2006 report

from Retail Systems Research (RSR),

entitled Loyalty and Personalisation: The

Next Generation of Retail CRM*, found

loyalty programmes at a crossroads. Many

retailers were not getting value out of their

programmes and had locked themselves

into a ‘pay to play’ Catch 22 situation,

where they were essentially offering

discounts to consumers in exchange for

collecting purchase history. A 2007 update,

meanwhile, looked at more foundational

capabilities for customer data collection,

management, and use - which can be used

with or without a loyalty programme.

Whether it is to a loyalty card holder or just

a high-frequency shopper, the tools are the

same: retailers must be able to identify

target segments, design offers, deliver

offers and track performance. Had the

industry evolved to a point where retailers

could consistently live up to their

Driving loyaltyScott Thompson reviews the Retail Systems/

Microsoft/BT Expedite/Retalix loyalty roundtable

Synchronized Retail

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““HHiissttoorriiccaallllyy llooyyaallttyy hhaass hhaadd aa vveerryy nnaarrrrooww aanndd ppoossssiibbllyy bbaadd rreeppuuttaattiioonn..””

LLooyyaallttyy iiss aa ddiiffffiiccuulltt tthhiinngg ttoo mmeeaassuurree

aanndd tthheerree iissnn’’tt aa ‘‘oonnee ssiizzee ffiittss aallll’’

ssoolluuttiioonn ffllooaattiinngg aarroouunndd oouutt tthheerree..


customers’ expectations? RSR concluded

no, but observed that there were signs

of progress.

Jones of Retalix, which provides software

solutions to retailers and distributors

worldwide, noted that historically loyalty

has had a very narrow and possibly bad

reputation - “why don’t you just reduce

prices? We think that there is a different

angle of attack and one of the reasons for

our involvement in this roundtable is that

we’d like to share our thoughts.”

“I don’t think loyalty is alive, in the sense

that there are only two schemes in the UK

that we would deem successes - Tesco and

Boots,” he continued. “Loyalty is perceived

by a lot of retailers as a discount scheme.

Part of the issue is that in grocery you

accumulate points quickly as your spend is

high, but in the non-food sector fast

moving is one a week, not one a second.

The question is: can we redefine the value

proposition of loyalty to the customer in a

different way that makes them either

spend more or visit the store more often?”

A case perhaps of putting the concept

of true loyalty ahead of loyalty cards? In

pursuit of this goal, Marks & Spencer has

done a lot of good work towards engaging

its customers. A recent development, for

instance, involves in-store signs asking for

feedback via communication channels,

allowing the retailer’s customers to express

their comments, suggestions, questions

and compliments about any aspect of their

shopping experience. At the same time,

however, it is well aware that it cannot

afford to be complacent, that today’s

consumer faces unprecedented choice

when it comes to shopping, both in-store

and online. “We do need to start talking to

our customers on a more frequent basis.

The feedback system has been great for

us. We have a big loyal base but that base is

potentially tempted to go elsewhere all of

the time. Speaking as a shopper, loyalty

programmes don’t work for me - they need

to change quite a bit,” said Marks &

Spencer’s Peters.

In many ways, it isn’t about the loyalty

card but rather the data and what you do

with it. Many retailers have been guilty of

failing to have a good system in place that

makes the most of the data. BT Expedite’s

Bowen highlighted the operational and

strategic aspects of the loyalty debate.

“Operationally, as a retailer if you have a

card you are looking to capture customer

information more consistently. Strategically,

the card is very important - one forgets to

consistently measure the ROI of not just

the marketing programmes but also any

money that is going into the database for

additional analysis. So to me loyalty is not

dead - the problem is we’re not consistently

focusing on ROI,” she said. “One of our store

customers had a card and did a small pilot

of three stores and they decided not to

take it further as they felt they weren’t

getting value for money - they were just

giving away margin. We weren’t directly

involved in that process as it wasn’t our

system but we did have a bit of a giggle

because we thought - they probably didn’t

benchmark it properly, because if you do

have a good database of customers there

will almost certainly be a ROI. The card is

important for data capture and for

measuring ROI.”

How can technology help address these

challenges? For Retalix’s Mishaan, the

technology barrier was passed a long time

ago. It’s in the execution where retail often

falls down. “A lot of companies have

wonderful loyalty applications, but from

what I see once you decide to go down that

route you need to set up a structure and

the processes around it in order to benefit

from a loyalty programme,” he remarked.

“You need people to manage the

programme, you need marketing around it,

you need to do the simple stuff - for

instance, once you collect the data, you

have to look at it and examine patterns of

consumer behaviour. When you start a

loyalty programme, you collect a lot of

information but if you don’t do something

that targets the data, you risk going the

route of simply having a discount at the

end of the purchase and then you’re at

the stage where people have 15 cards in

their wallets.”

Indeed, a major problem would seem to

be that many retailers have tested the

loyalty waters but failed to see their

projects through. As Mosaic’s Wilks put it,

CRM is not just for Christmas. “It needs to

be an ongoing programme. Many retailers

have tried it, spent money on a CRM or

loyalty card solution, installed it and then

walked away, expecting it to automatically

produce returns,” he commented. “You

need to drive it, manage it and keep

working with the data and because your

customer base shifts, your metrics need to

shift and it requires continuous investment.

Retail is not good at these things - it is good

at fire and forget - let’s move on.”

There have, of course, been success

stories, most notably the previously

mentioned programmes run by Tesco and

Boots. Retalix’s Mishaan commented:

“There are examples of retailers who are

running very successful programmes and I

think we need to learn from them. From

what I see, it’s usually around how the

loyalty is being managed - if you have the

right people and processes, and you’re

doing good things with your data, then

there’s no reason it shouldn’t be successful.

Also, we can look at other industries, such

as the airline business. Technology is very

advanced and there are companies who are

doing good work.”

And Paravecchio of Microsoft highlighted

a US business (electronics retailer BestBuy)

that has also done good work in this field,

both in terms of strategy and ongoing

support. “Six years ago, they invested in the

idea of angel and demon customers and

used Columbia University Professor, Larry

Selden, to help them with their planning.

They scored and really stratified all their

customer types and then they went about

architecting stores to keep it to the

demographics. It has been very successful

for them and everybody is trying to copy it,

but when you look at it, the CRM

technology is not the issue. What they did

was a great job at programmes to link one-

to-one, cross and up-sell.” But even BestBuy

hasn’t got it all figured out. “The

investment’s there, the strategy’s there,


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but what I find being a BestBuy customer is

that the execution is not as flawless as it

needs to be. Great approach and strategy

but then how does it come alive? At the

same time, however, they clearly have the

top executives to drive this at a governance

level,” said Paravecchio.

CCrreeddiitt ccrruunncchh

In these challenging times, the retail sector

is perhaps being forced to redefine the

meaning of loyalty. The credit crunch

means that a number of retailers are

revisiting their budgets, either for new

investment in CRM or continual investment,

according to BT Expedite’s Bowen. “Whether

they have a CRM or a loyalty solution, what

we’re finding is that they’re getting

aggressively territorial about their

customers. For instance, when one retailer

we know of closed down a store, they went

into the database and pulled straightaway

the customers from that store and tried to

push them onto the web so they didn’t

actually lose them. So we’re seeing some

quite creative uses of the database in a way

that hasn’t been done before.” But before

redefining loyalty, how do we define it in

the first place? It could be argued that it’s

something of a nebulous concept. Waitrose,

for instance, has a large segment of what it

calls ‘secondary shoppers’ - these might be

young families who are visiting Tesco and

Asda and buying multi-pack toilet rolls etc,

but there is something unique about

Waitrose’s offering that draws them in for

fresh goods. “How do you define that

loyalty? Because you might say - they can’t

be loyal as they shop somewhere else, but

for us if that secondary shopper were to

buy a few more items…well, you can guess

the rest. So you’ve got to try and target

them, but it isn’t necessarily just basket

analysis - there are other areas where we

can try to drive that loyalty, which is down to

product quality as that is what’s bringing

them in-store,” said Waitrose’s Jones. “We do

have programmes of work which aren’t card

programmes as such, but they underpin the

protection of our product development and

how we make sure that becomes the best

that we can achieve relative to being a good

value for money proposition.”

The conversation then moved to

fashion, one of the toughest retail sectors

when it comes to earning a customer’s

loyalty. Mosaics’ Wilks explained that

nobody in fashion believes the female

customer will buy all her clothes in their

stores. “To some degree we’re always

dealing with a secondary shopper. For us,

the aim is to increase the visits and increase

the spend. We’re not expecting that the

lady will never go anywhere else. It’s all

about accepting that all you have is a share

and the aim is to maximise and drive that

share forward, rather than trying to

become totally dominant, which I guess is

the Tesco and Sainsbury’s approach.”

“In the run up to Christmas, everybody

was focused on generating cash due to the

hoo-hah around rent and a few other

things. That certainly was the case in the

fashion business. It was a dash for cash at

the expense of margin, but part of that

was because, in terms of loyalty schemes,

we don’t have the necessary measurement

tools, so holding sales was an easy lever to

pull to generate business in order to make

sure you were trading successfully into the

New Year. I think everyone might be

stepping back from that now and having

a think about the way forward, but that

was certainly the case three months ago,”

he continued.

B&Q’s Glendinning backed up this point,

adding that the mad dash for Christmas

and the resultant sales blitz made it more

important than ever to communicate with

customers regarding promotions etc. “We

are going to have to cut through a lot of

the clutter - big flourescent signs saying 50

per cent off don’t really mean a lot now.”

CCoouuppoonnss//vvoouucchheerrss

In the past 12 months, the coupons and

vouchers sector has started to gain some

serious traction. Vouchers have been

transformed from the old days of

cardboard or paper money-off coupons for

basic FMCG items. Today many leading

retailers, from Marks & Spencer to Argos,

have online offers that can wipe pounds

off the cost of both luxury and staple

goods. According to the website analyst

Hitwise, during one week in November

2008, five times as many searches were

conducted on ‘voucher’ compared with

‘Father Christmas’. And sites offering

discounts and rewards feature strongly in

Nielsen Online’s list of the fastest growing

sites in the UK, from shopping comparison

sites to those offering coupons and

rewards. Marks & Spencer’s Peters

noted: “I think we are turning towards

coupons/vouchers. Last Christmas, the

vouchers.com website was bubbling under -

this time around they were in your face. It

gives you something to hold and feel and

touch, you feel like you’re getting more of

a bargain.”

BT Expedite’s Bowen also highlighted this

trend. “If I see 50 or 75 per cent off on the

web or in-store, I’m not going to follow that

up because I think it’s the end of the line. By

the time it gets to 75 per cent, it’s like no

one wants it,” she said. “The good thing

about a voucher or coupon is that I don’t

think about it in the same way. I perceive it

as a different offer. It’s more targeted, a

discount on something I want, not

something that has 75 per cent off.”

There is a downside, however. “It’s very

annoying when you get a voucher in the

post and you lose it and know that it’s still

valid. Why are retailers still doing that when

they can text a coupon code to someone

and they can use it in-store? It’s so simple

and in technological terms it’s not

expensive,” Bowen said.

Waitrose’s Jones noted: “We’ve got a lot

of global coupons and promotional activity

that doesn’t really know who the end

customer is. That in a sense gets people

over the door - the challenge for us is then

to somehow attract that customer to

share with us their identity. And then once

they’ve done that, we’ve got the

opportunity to build a relationship whereby

we may be able to do targeted loyalty

programmes, and I can see how Tesco and

Boots have tried to take advantage of that.

We have an account card and we’re trying

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to grow the base of that card, but relative

to the number of transactions done on

these cards we don’t really know enough

about the people using them. It’s about

trying to understand more about the

person who comes in during the Christmas

period and spends a lot but doesn’t return.”

There are, of course, security and spam

issues, but these can be overcome by

encouraging customers to sign up for

offers, making it a case of marketing to

your loyal customer base. Marks & Spencer

has been working on some interesting

propositions in this area and these have

helped to change the landscape - the result

being that companies see a major retailer

doing it and so sit up and take note. “We

have spend and save, so you get them

issued over Christmas to then spend in the

first few weeks of January. You get your

credit card statement and also vouchers

offering money off when you spend a

certain amount,” said Peters. “But vouchers

can be very frustrating, so it’s a case of

how to overcome these problems - mobile

is certainly an interesting option.”

With so many innovative applications

floating around, where does it leave the

technology vendors? Retalix’s Mishaan

acknowledged that it has created a very

challenging environment. “From a technical

perspective, guys like Marks & Spencer are

becoming more and more creative in the

way they use coupons and discounts. It has

been quite a challenge for us to cater for

this. We have a loyalty application that has

hundreds of menus in it but still we’re

dazzled sometimes by the requests we get

from our customers to put in different

kinds of promotions.” he said. Whilst there is

a lot of innovative technology out there, all

roads must lead back to the customer. As

Marks & Spencer’s Peters put it: “We get all

the crazy marketing ideas, but the key thing

that the marketing guys sometimes don’t

think about is - what does it look like on the

receipt and can the customer understand

it? Over Christmas, our receipts were really

long - you had all the detailed products and

underneath the discount, then the VAT and

so on. That’s a big part of it, because if you

don’t understand what you’re getting, it

can become a major problem.”

TThhee mmuullttii--cchhaannnneell cchhaalllleennggee

Where does the multi-channel revolution fit

in to the loyalty landscape? Proactive

retailers are continuing to invest in their

multi-channel offerings, but 2008 proved

that this remains an area of discovery for

many. So how can companies employ

strategies - in-store, catalogue, web and

mobile - to improve the customer experience

and, in turn, drive more loyal customers?

B&Q’s Glendinning commented: “The

thing that has changed in the last ten years

is the online shopping experience and the

fact that you can capture a lot more

information. I think the question is: how

much of that can you leverage in your

store’s business and how can you connect

all the channels and understand your

customer and the way they shop across

those channels? People have seen how you

can capture that information online and are

looking at how you can use those tricks

with other channels.”

Many retailers are enhancing their

business models to engage customers with

the right information at the right time

through their channel of choice. Yet many

others are falling short in this area. BT

Expedite’s Bowen observed that her

company has around 115 retailers who use

its applications, but probably only about 18

per cent of them are pursuing the multi-

channel route. “They collect multi-channel

data but they’re not proactively looking at

things like profitability by channel. How

many times with a retailer do you have to

give your details on separate occasions

across the channels? This can infuriate

the customer.”

But whilst integrating channels and

getting a clearer view of the customer is

hugely important, it should be noted that

customers don’t see channels, they see a

brand, stressed Dr Millard. She highlighted

research she had carried out, showing the

importance of positive investment in multi-

channel. Internet and mobile customers are

only a click away from abandoning a company

if their expectations are not met. The most

multi-channel prone customer, however,

tends to be a more profitable consumer for

retailers as they are more likely to engage in

cross-selling and up-selling. Customers

using two channels spend 114 per cent

more than single channel shoppers. Those

using three channels are 48 per cent more

profitable than those using just two. Yet

only around ten per cent of companies

handle more than telephone calls in their

contact centres. Many firms have been

evangelical in trying to do all their customer

contact on lower cost, ‘self-serve’ channels,

such as automated calls and e-mail. This

often frustrates customers and is not

always the correct approach.

Microsoft’s Dobson said he had recently

returned from the NRF show in New York

where he saw a presentation by Laura

Wade-Gery, CEO at Tesco.com and Direct.

“She was discussing the competition within

the channels and noted that, if you really

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want to have a seamless transactional

experience with the customer, if you buy

online and pick up in-store, the store

manager is losing that stock and doesn’t

get credit for it - he’s not going to be

happy with that sale, so it’s creating

conflict. You have to solve that internal

conflict and the way they do it at Tesco is

double account for the revenue so that the

store manager and the dotcom business

are both happy. There are lots of issues like

that. No matter how much data you capture,

if you don’t solve some of the fundamental

internal issues, there will be a problem.”

Waitrose is also experiencing its own

share of multi-channel-related issues. “People

are nowadays much more prepared to

share their details on the internet. Even in

the last three years, people have moved a

huge way forward from ‘I’ll never put my

credit details on there’ to ‘I trust these sites

and I’m prepared to do this on a regular

basis’. I think what will happen is we will try

to look at our Ocado customers who are

maintained in a customer database that

doesn’t touch the Waitrose one, which may

or may not have some synergies. People

often don’t understand that they’re

separate businesses. We have internal

challenges to make sense of that clutter,

but if we achieve that, we’ve got a

better chance to see where the oppor-

tunities exist.”

Marks & Spencer is another retailer

striving to solve the multi-channel puzzle.

“We have a website and an ordering system

installed. And eventually we’ll have a click

and collect application, but issues we have

include contentions among directors in the

business and contentions in-store (we pay

people to sell chickens and blouses, we

don’t pay them to flick around the internet

and click on links and say, accept this

product) as well as journey contentions,”

said Peters. “But you’ve also got potentially

an absolute money spinner. It can be a real

bonus for stores but I don’t think we can

actually see that yet. If in-store and the

web merge, could everybody be happy or is

it too much of a risk? That’s where we are

at the moment.”

BT Expedite’s Bowen emphasised the

potential of click and collect. “One of our

click and collect customers has only had

this application running for three months

and their conversion rate is 80 per cent.

When we did the ROI we didn’t put it

anywhere near that.”

Ultimately, the multi-channel revolution

has lead a lot of companies to be very

creative in the solutions they provide.

Retalix’s Mishaan said that, “we have a really

cool feature that we call Queue Busting, so

if you want to prevent customers from

standing in line, you have a very simple

handheld device, whereby someone from

the store can go up to the customer and

start scanning their products. From a

loyalty perspective, it’s a great tool - all

about saving people time.” But whilst

technology such as this has huge potential,

it was left to Marks & Spencer’s Peters to

emphasise the human element. “You can

have the best technology, but it doesn’t

matter if you don’t have the people in

place,” she argued.

CCaammppaaiiggnn mmaannaaggeemmeenntt

As several panellists pointed out during

the course of the roundtable, it can be

difficult for retailers to plan, execute and

track customer interactions. That’s where

campaign management comes in and

business is booming. Microsoft’s

Paravecchio observed: “We’re seeing a lot

going on in terms of digital advertising and

marketing. The market is predicted to reach

$117 billion by 2011. In the food space,

you’re going to see a lot of the consumer

goods companies wanting to go direct.

From the content end and the backend,

that’s where we’re seeing a lot of

innovation - the dunnhumby’s of this world

who want to integrate and have more of a

digital way of communicating one-to-one

with consumers.”

Waitrose’s Jones made the point that:

“Ten years ago, one of the concerns we had

was that people didn’t want us to know

about them. But I think that’s shifted

because now it’s a given fact that if you

shop online, the retailer knows about you

and this makes the consumer more open to

being targeted in a campaign. Ten years

ago, if you sent me a mailer saying you

knew all this stuff about me, I’d be quite

worried but nowadays I shop online or I’ve

bought a mobile phone where I have to give

a name and address.”

With that, the roundtable drew to a close,

as Dr Nicola Millard concluded: “I like to think

about loyalty in completely human terms.

Why are you loyal to people? It’s a lot to do

with trust, it’s a lot to do with permission,

it’s a lot to do with not being a nag, which

is one of the challenges we face - particularly

with campaign management being perhaps

a little bit too proactive sometimes.” A

hugely interesting roundtable then, with

several pertinent points made. How do you

drive loyalty in the 21st century? It’s a

tough one to call. Loyalty is a difficult thing

to measure and there isn’t a ‘one size fits

all’ solution floating around out there. At

the same time, the innovative technology

exists to help address the challenges

around attracting and retaining customers.

And Tesco, Boots and BestBuy are proof

positive that those retailers who truly

understand the purpose of their cards/

programmes (and who make the necessary

long-term commitments) are well placed

to grow and prosper in these challe-

nging times.

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