From loyalty cards to micro-marketing strategies: Where is Europe's retail industry heading?

Loyalty cards are commonplace in European retailing; few retailers, however, are leveraging customer information to become more customer-oriented. The paper addresses the current trends in European loyalty schemes, drawing from data collected by the Observatory on Loyalty Cards at the University of Parma, and suggests that the real drivers of a retailer's transition to a ‘micro’ (ie customer-specific) marketing orientation are (a) the level and nature of competition in the retailer's market and (b) the retailer's value and culture.