Call me loyal: Supermarkets soup up rewards schemes
But are Kiwi consumers better off shopping around to find bargains?
Supermarket loyalty schemes are ramping up, with new partnerships, boosted rewards and additional points for shoppers who ditch the plastic card and download the app.
This week, Countdown took a step further in its rebranding to Woolworths, launching its new Everyday Rewards programme.
The new card or app means the end for Onecard — Countdown’s
20-year-old reward programme. Woolworths NZ said the new iscount and reward programme was easy to understand, with $1 spent at the supermarket earning the consumer one Everyday Rewards point.
Every 2000 points earns the shopper a $15 voucher, which can be spent at Woolworths or BP.
But the opening week meant bigger rewards and savings, Mark Wolfenden of Woolworths NZ said.
“Instead of spending $1000 on groceries to get the equivalent points, new members this month will be gifted the points straight off the bat to help them get money off their shop faster.”
Registered members of Onecard will see their existing points and vouchers automatically transferred to their Everyday Rewards accounts.
Instead of sending the old plastic Onecards to the landfill, Woolworths has collection boxes in-store and will recycle them with TerraCycle.
Once collected, the cards will be sorted, cleaned, and melted into plastic pellets and remoulded to make new recycled products such as outdoor furniture and plastic shipping pallets.
Woolworths had partnered with BP, online alcohol store Vineonline and ASB and said there would be more partners announced soon.
“Members can earn up to 4000 points . . . simply by downloading and signing into the Everyday Rewards app and linking to their ASB Visa Rewards credit card, BPme and Vineonline,” Wolfenden said.
Customers could get double points on all shops for the next three days and a 20 cent per litre discount at BP (on a fill of up to 50 litres) with the first scan of the Everyday Rewards card.
Savvy shopper Emma Healy said she shopped around between supermarkets but was also a fan of loyalty schemes and said Woolworths’ new card “offered money for nothing”.
“There are double points and . . .
1000 points for downloading the app which is halfway to a voucher for doing nothing.”
The Christchurch woman, who runs money-saving website Mum’s Money New Zealand, had estimated she would earn about $50 this month with the launch of Everyday Rewards.
“It would be silly not to sign up and get them even if you are not a regular customer.”
But Consumer NZ urged shoppers to do their homework before signing to any rewards scheme as there were often more savings to be had from shopping around than staying loyal.
Consumer’s Gemma Rasmussen said the advocacy group was “not a fan” of loyalty schemes and said supermarkets earned “big money” from the data they collect from shoppers.
“That’s your personal information and a data trail of your habits.
We think the ‘data downside’ outweighs the benefits for consumers.
Gemma Rasmussen, Consumer NZ
“Often, the information collected is used by a business to refine their products and services and sometimes to target their advertising.”
She said some businesses shared information with third parties — although New World and Woolworths assure customers they do not.
“We think the ‘data downside’ outweighs the benefits for consumers.”
The cost-of-living crisis meant shoppers were more likely to be swayed by food and petrol discounts.
But shopping around was usually cheaper than the rewards earned for staying loyal.
In October 2023 Consumer NZ assessed prices for 48 products with a Onecard or New World Clubcard discount, and which were also available at Pak’n Save and The Warehouse, neither of which use a loyalty discount scheme, Rasmussen said.
“Three-quarters of the loyalty discounted products we looked at were available at an equal or lower price by shopping elsewhere,” Rasmussen said.