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"Waitrose Loyalty" Scheme or Club? Will Customers be Bothered?
Following Waitrose's announcement last week that they are to launch their first loyalty card (mywaitrose card), it is interesting to note that the launch is a lot less like the grocery loyalty schemes we have all been accustomed to. Waitrose are keen to make customers aware that the "loyalty" scheme will not be rewards based nor a cash-back scheme - it is comparable to a club, where, on signing up, you will receive offers, competitions and ideas tailored to individual needs. This is a departure from more traditional means and it will be interesting to observe what the impact will be. Loyalty is usually all about encouraging behaviour change in exchange for a reward; will Waitrose's customers spend more because they can enter a comptition or receive a free recipe?
An engaging loyalty programme or rewards based scheme requires a base reward to incentivise customers to sign up, something to entice customers to choose their store over and above all of the others. The more you shop, the more you earn in that store. Waitrose, a successful store, has not adopted this approach. In the world of loyalty, it is strange that they do not require people to be "enticed" to join the scheme.
As is the case in all successful loyalty schemes, customer relevance is critical. If you are not getting sufficient people to use the store's card on a consistent basis, then you will struggle to learn their shopping habits -a simple proven strategy that successful loyalty managers rely on to tailor the rewards to the customer. It is worth questioning whether the general public will make the effort to join the Waitrose scheme and then carry and present the card. The competitions and special offers would have to be VERY attractive for that to happen.
Waitrose prides itself on being a high quality supermarket, appealing to the more affluent customer looking to purchase top quality food. If rewards are not beneficial, enticing or relevent to the individual, the card will become superfluous. Perhaps they are not looking to appeal to the wider public and concentrating simply on a smaller demographic who prefer a more pot luck approach to receiving rewards through competition entry. We hope so, as this appears to be the only chance for successful customer engagement.
Without doubt, Waitrose is the UK's premium supermarket. If it wants to protect or increase its market share using a loyalty initiative, then it will need to work very hard to make the announced plan work. Love them or hate them, Nectar and Clubcard have more than half of UK households using their cards - and if you ask any Waitrose shopper if they have one of those cards.....you may get a big surprise?
