Gift cards and coupons are well established in German Retail

The annual EHI-survey about retail in Germany for the last year under review revealed interesting facts, from which the most important in the field of gift and loyalty cards shall be reported.

To begin with there are loyalty cards of different kinds widespread, like city cards, club cards, cross-company bonus points programmes (e.g. Payback) und most of all dealer-owned bonus- resp. discount cards, that become issued from 34,8% of the big and 26,2% of the medium-size companies.  By contrast there are about 37% of the big and around 60% of the medium-size retailers that are not issuing any cards. The EHI also inquired the reasons therefor and gathered the extent of affirmation (from 1 = full affirmation to 3 = no affirmation) to the following aspects of loyalty cards: "Positive Marketing effects", "Good instrument for customer loyalty", "Targeted customer approach", "Simplyfying discounting", "Alternative payment instrument" and "Good instrument for sales financing".

With 1,15, 1,11 and 1,13 points the big retailers see the most important reasons for loyalty cards in the first three aspects. They also do mostly agree with the easier discounting at 1,43 points. However they are attaching few importance to the items of alternative payment or sales financing instrument.

With 1,22, 1,22, 1,25 and 1,45 the medium-size retailers evaluate the items 1 to 4 somewhat worse, but are still in the range of full affirmation. But they are rating the importance of loyalty cards as payment resp. sales financing instrument with 2,51 resp. 2,65 points even lower than the big retailers. The changes compared to the previous year are low.

Considerably less affirmation in 5 of 6 items is shown by the companies without loyalty card. On average the big retail companies agree with 1,46, 1,58, 1,38 and 1,54 points to the aspects "Marketing effects", "Customer loyalty", "Customer approach" and "Discounting" and do even rate the importance of the card as payment or sales financing instrument better than those issuing cards. The medium-size companies however are clearly refusing by values around 2 points and 1,63 as most positive value. Nevertheless at least the ratings of the big retailers improved in contrast to the previous year.

A radically different picture occurs for coupons. 91,2% of the big and 57,7% of the small and medium-size retailers use cards like this. Even foreign coupons become issued and accepted by some medium-size companies (ca. 12 resp. 20%) and become issued by about every third big retailer and accepted by about every fourth.

Also apps are becoming a more important topic and are already in use or at least in planning stage in the bigger companies. Whereas 64% of them are using or planning an app, the medium-size retailers are notably behind with about 16%. In this group the part of those who are not planning an app or who are not commenting on that is also distinctly prevailing.

The conclusion of the EHI Institute about the use of customer cards can probably also be taken as an outlook for the app and coupon trend: "Real good systems will survive and bring positive Marketing effects!" (Horst Rüter, EHI-Card congress 2013)