Thursday, March 29, 2012

My Jealous Supermarket II

Last week I wrote the Figure It Out article that was published to the Capgemini Consulting UK Operational Research team blog, My Jealous Supermarket.

I encourage to click through and read the article. To summarise, my supermarket is targeting me with discount coupons in order to maintain my loyalty which it mistakenly thinks it is losing because I am a travelling consultant and have shopped very little lately.

Anyhow, after returning from a week in the north of England followed by a weekend in Florence followed by another week in the north, it was immensely satisfying to see the "Spend £30, get £3 off" coupon roll off the receipt printer when I purchased ingredients for my meal this evening after making no purchases for two weeks. They DO care!

I wonder how this initiative is going for them? Are they successfully winning people back? Any proper initiative would have a benefits tracking element following implementation, but comparing before and after and asserting causality is always difficult. Consider myself. One day I will wrap up my project in the north and spend some time in London again. I will return to my supermarket and purchase lots of food. Success! After months of giving me coupons, they will have finally won back my favour and loyalty. Or not...