Promo Marketing: Shoppercentric research: in tough times, consumers favour loyalty cards

Independent shopper insights consultancy Shoppercentric has published its Shopper Stock Take Index for a third year, which reveals that 41% of consumers use store loyalty cards ‘a lot’ and 47% use them ‘occasionally’. Only 1% of survey respondents said they had never heard of loyalty cards.

However, Danielle Pinnington, Managing Director at Shoppercentric, warns: “Retailers and brands must keep a finger on the shopper pulse and appreciate that each customer is now using a range of strategies to cope with increasing pressures on household budgets. Which categories or sectors will suffer most this year is likely to depend on how they react to changing shopper needs.”

Pinnington adds: “With shoppers picking and choosing between stores for particular items based on their own experience of how well different retailers deliver, there is even greater pressure to differentiate and create memorable in-store experiences. Equally, avoiding or challenging misconceptions based on bad experiences has become more important. If, as our report shows, shoppers are actively widening their repertoires, loyalty as we used to know it is an outdated term.”

Shoppercentric collected more than a thousand online survey responses from shoppers, covering how they felt about the stability of their household budgets, how their shopping habits are changing, and what brands and retailers need to do as a result.

The 2018 Shopper Stock Take index reveals that while shoppers aren’t yet feeling the same pinch as in the worst of the recession, they are certainly starting to feel more pressure. Only one in four claims to be unaffected by the current economic situation, with a considerable proportion of UK shoppers having to make minor changes to spending.