History
In 1993 Terry Leahy asked the Tesco Marketing team to investigate the potential of loyalty cards. In the past Tesco had run Green Shield Stamps as a promotional tool which rewarded people for visits and spend but gained no customer information. The initial team led by Grant Harrison, researched programmes across the world and developed a proposal which showed that a loyalty card could be very effective. The key change since the days of Green Shield Stamps was the ability to cost effectively track individual customer behaviour using a magnetic stripe card. In 1994, the man responsible for Tesco's trials, Grant Harrison, attended a conference where Clive Humby from dunnhumby was speaking. Dunnhumby had been founded in 1989 by Clive Humby and Edwina Dunn. The company, offering marketing services, had already signed clients such as Cable & Wireless and BMW. Successful trials throughout 1994 led to the Tesco board asking Harrison and Humby to present to the annual Board strategy session. The first response from the board came from Tesco's then-Chairman Lord MacLaurin, who said "What scares me about this is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years."
David Sainsbury, then chairman of J Sainsbury plc, rejected the idea of introducing a similar scheme. However, the effect that Clubcard had on Sainsbury's sales led to the reversal of that decision, with the launch of the Sainsbury's Reward Card in June 1996.
After two slight amendments to the design of cards in the 1990s by Evans Hunt Scott's creative team, the scheme had a major relaunch in 2005 with all members being sent personalised cards and key fobs which could be scanned at the checkout, rather than swiped. The scheme was again relaunched in 2008 with all seven million members once again being sent new design cards and key fobs. The Tesco Clubcard scheme was introduced into the Republic of Ireland almost immediately after Tesco's acquisition of Power Supermarkets Limited (now Tesco Ireland), and operates in similar fashion. It is an extension of the UK scheme, not a separate scheme, so Irish Clubcards can be used in UK stores.
In 2007, Tesco Clubcard was first introduced in all Tesco Extra stores in Malaysia and later in all Tesco stores. In Malaysia, every two Ringgit Malaysia spent is 1 Clubcard point. After two weeks from the launch of Clubcard in all Tesco stores in Malaysia, there were over 800,000 applications.
The Tesco Clubcard scheme was introduced into Polish Tesco Stores in 2008, and SR Slovakia at the end of 2009. As of September 2010, these markets have 1.5m and 850,000 cardholders respectively. Though operating in a similar fashion to the UK scheme it is independent, so Irish and British Clubcards can not be used in Slovak stores. In Slovakia every one euro spent is 1 Clubcard point (excluding petrol). Clubcard was launched in the Czech Republic and Hungary in August and September 2010.
Read more about this topic: Tesco Clubcard
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