It always surprised me how few supermarkets have loyalty cards given the success of the Tesco clubcard, so I decided to contact a couple of them myself and ask why they haven’t incorporated a program of their own, beginning with the prospect of an Asda loyalty card.
Asda is owned by Wal-Mart, a US-based supermarket giant which is the biggest private employer in the world and has over 2 million employees, so they obviously know a thing or two about the industry in which they operate. I asked them why they have not launched an Asda loyalty card, here is the response I got from Asda:
Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to email Asda about an Asda loyalty card.
A few years ago we did run a trial scheme in 19 of our stores, when loyalty programs were at their most popular. Asda listened to what our customers had to say, and ended up deciding not to run the scheme permanently.
One of the things we learned from our customers was that they preferred low prices at the time of paying, rather than gifts in the future. So we decided to cut prices across all our stores through our Rollback program instead – we think this is the best way of rewarding customers for loyalty.
Thank you once again for taking the time to email Asda and if there is anything else I can do please let me know.
Sincerely
ASDA Service Team
Asda evidently selects price as a differentiator over customer loyalty programs. In all honesty I suspected this anyway and I’m sure many other people will have too. Still, useful to know, even if it means we shouldn’t hold our breath for an Asda loyalty card.
UPDATE Sadly Morrisons don’t have any plans for a Morrisons loyalty card either.
