Metro Using Loyalty Card To Boost Their Brand
Metro Inc, one of the biggest Canadian grocers, announced that they are launching their own loyalty card in Quebec. This will give them greater insight into consumers’ behavior and shopping habits.
This is indicative of brands boosting loyalty by becoming more intimate (not in that way!) with their consumers. A deeper relationship between a brand and a consumer, shown by personalized products or services, creates a stronger emotional tie between them that cannot be easily replicated by another brand.
Tesco, the largest grocer in the UK, has a well established loyalty card that provides them a significant advantage in a highly competitive market. Tesco card holders regularly receive coupon booklets customized to their shopping habits, a far more attractive prospect than generic coupons targeted at an entire city.
Grocery stores aren’t the only ones emphasizing customer intimacy to build their brand. There is a famous story about Nordstrom’s where they let a customer return a tire to one of their stores even though they don’t carry tires because it gave them a deeper understanding of that customer’s lifestyle.
What do you think? Will the Metro loyalty card give their brand a boost?
Ben Wise on Branding 
Fine blog. I got a lot of good data. I’ve been watching this technology for awhile. It’s intriguing how it keeps shifting, yet some of the core components stay the same. Have you seen much change since Google made their most recent acquisition in the field?
Kristian Mattias
February 7, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Thanks for publishing about this. There’s a bunch of great tech info on the internet. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your site. I’m impressed – I try to keep a couple blogs somewhat current, but it’s a struggle sometimes. You’ve done a big job with this one. How do you do it?
Dorothy Charvat
February 9, 2010 at 2:27 pm