How Tesco is Winning Customer Loyalty

Scoring Points is the updated and revised warts-and-all story of 12 years of Tesco Clubcard – ‘the world’s most successful retail loyalty scheme’ say the authors.

It’s the tale of a beautiful relationship. There’s loyalty, gratitude, understanding …and £100 million incremental sales annually. Everybody’s happy: the shareholders, the executives, the staff and most importantly of all, the customers, who have shared £1 billion-worth of vouchers to date.

The Clubcard is also a great barometer of customer sentiment. The scheme has given Tesco a very responsive and valuable customer satisfaction tool, since points are easily trackable.

What is the Clubcard’s magic ingredient then? Simplicity. From its point-collecting mechanism to its Lowe Howard-Spink ‘Every little helps’ adverts and one-page membership form, it seems the Tesco customer prefers the ‘KISS’ approach – Keep it Simple, Stupid! And when it got complicated (marketers can’t resist tinkering), Tesco simplified it again, getting rid of add-on deals. There’s a valuable lesson there for businesses in any sector.

See also: What Tesco can teach us - Ken Jacobson, CEO of Vistage International, lists some of the key pointers to Tesco’s success.