Morrisons, the UK grocer chasing Tesco and Sainsbury’s for market share, announced it would trial three separate loyalty cards in the coming weeks.
The announcement was not unexpected as the company had mentioned its struggle to improve same store sales in a January 2014 earnings call without any form of data driven marketing program able to target individual customers. In that call, CEO Dalton Philips cited a “lack of capability to tailor offers” in an increasingly sophisticated and data driven market as the reason for change.
The loyalty trifecta consists of these cards:
- Match & More – allows customers to receive savings on an item if a rival store has that same item at a lower cost
- Miles More – allows customers to accumulate points for fuel purchases
- Yello – offer instant rewards on specific products during checkout
The new programs being launched will serve to replace the company’s Collector Card and is hoped to create greater value and a better shopping experience among Morrisons 12 million customers.
The announcement is interesting in that Morrisons seems to be striving to be “all things to all people”. For example, the Miles More card and Match & More line up as competitive responses to Tescos Club Card while Yello is a tip of the hat to the Waitrose minimalistic loyalty approach.
Our first thought is to applaud Morrisons for the move, but also to wonder why Morrisons doesn’t combine the features of the three cards into one comprehensive program, rather than positioning them separately.
Possibly this is Morrisons approach to piloting different tactics and by end of 2014, we’ll see another evolution of their approach to customer loyalty.