they pledged to offer a variety of customer services, including extra
packers, freephone customer hotline, baby changing facilities, parent and
child parking and 10 different types of trolley. A company spokesman said
that this was a direct response to customers, ‘We talked to them and a
demand for old-fashioned shopping came through loud and clear.’
Safeway entered the arena a few months later by offering the ABC card
nationally in the autumn of 1995. Many commentators saw the offer of one
point for every pound spent as better value than the points system offered
by Tesco. ABC cardholders could also claim money off particular products
and take up special offers, such as a free car wash, dry cleaning or cinema
tickets. One advantage which Safeway had over Tesco was that their points
were redeemable at point of sale, so they had a greater opportunity for pro-
motional contact with their customers than Tesco’s quarterly mailouts, as
well as the fact that mailing costs were not incurred. By the end of
December 1995, Safeway were able to announce that they had successfully
enlisted 3.5 million members to their ABC scheme (approximately half its
customer base).
Other retailers were by now also rolling out their own loyalty schemes.
For instance, Somerfield partnered with Argos in their Premier Points
scheme and Budgen, a smaller retailer with a significant presence in the
South of England, launched a Visa card. Their card gave back 5p in the
pound to shoppers using it in their own stores and £10 for every £400 spent
on the card elsewhere. Asda, whilst not launching a card of their own,
insisted they would stick to price pledge initiatives, offering customers
value for money. They also announced that they would meet Tesco head on
by honouring any Clubcard voucher in their own stores, which caused
Tesco to complain to the Advertising Standards Association. This was to
little avail as the Association could only meet to review the case after
Christmas and so Asda reaped the benefits of its offer during the busy pre-
Xmas rush. Shortly after this time, Sainsbury quietly dropped their Saver
Card scheme, claiming they could not justify the £30 million cost to extend
it on a nationwide basis.
In February 1996, one year after the launch of Clubcard, Tesco’s market
share stood at 19 per cent.^3 Although a part of this rise was due to the
takeover of William Low supermarkets in Scotland, the card was credited
with raising the average weekly spend to £75 and the average spend of
each shopping trip from £23 to £26. Over the first year the cost of Tesco’s
‘thank you’ was estimated to be at £60 million and operating costs £8–10
million. However, it was against a background of customer-led initiatives
that the full value of the Clubcard could be assessed. Tim Mason, Tesco’s
recently promoted Marketing Director, saw the real impact working at the
local level, ‘I believe that the key to the future is going to be an individual
response to individual customers. It is no good talking about which is the
“best shopping trip”; you have got to deliver the best shopping trip for
88 Relationship Marketing