A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. A loyalty program typically involves the operator of a particular program set up an account for a customer of a business associated with the scheme, and then issue to the customer a loyalty card which may be a plastic or paper card, visually similar to a credit card, that identifies the cardholder as a participant in the program. Cards may have a barcode or magstripe to more easily allow for scanning, although some are chip cards or proximity cards.
Kohl's is an American department store retail chain, operated by Kohl's Corporation. As of December 2021 it is the largest department store chain in the United States, with 1,165 locations, operating stores in every U.S. state except Hawaii. The company was founded by Polish immigrant Maxwell Kohl, who opened a corner grocery store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1927. It went on to become a successful chain in the local area, and in 1962 the company branched out by opening its first department store. British American Tobacco Company took a controlling interest in the company in 1972 while still managed by the Kohl Family, and in 1979, the corporation was sold to BATUS Inc. A group of investors purchased the company in 1986 from British American Tobacco and took it public in 1992.
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain founded by Marion Barton Skaggs in April 1915 in American Falls, Idaho. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and features a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops and fuel centers. It is a subsidiary of Albertsons after being acquired by private equity investors led by Cerberus Capital Management in January 2015. Safeway's primary base of operations is in the Western United States with some stores located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The subsidiary is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, with its parent company, Albertsons, headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
Fred Meyer is an American chain of hypermarket superstores founded in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, United States, by Fred G. Meyer. The stores are found in the northwest U.S., within the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. The company merged with Kroger in 1998, though the stores are still branded Fred Meyer. The chain was one of the first in the United States to promote one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, bank, clothing, jewelry, home decor, home improvement, garden, electronics, restaurant, shoes, sporting goods, and toys. The Fred Meyer division is headquartered in Portland.
PC Optimum is a single loyalty program operated by Canadian retail conglomerate Loblaw Companies; it was created through the merger of Loblaws' PC Plus and Shoppers Drug Mart's Shoppers Optimum programs.
Self-checkouts (SCOs), also known as assisted checkouts (ACOs) or self-service checkouts, are machines that provide a mechanism for customers to complete their own transaction from a retailer without needing a traditional staffed checkout. When using SCOs, customers scan item barcodes before paying for their total shop without needing one-to-one staff assistance. Self-checkouts are used mainly in supermarkets, although they are not uncommon in department or convenience stores. Most self-checkout areas are supervised by at least one staff member, often assisting customers process transactions, correcting prices, or otherwise providing service.
Woolworths Supermarkets is an Australian chain of supermarkets and grocery stores owned by Woolworths Group. Founded in 1924, Woolworths today is Australia's biggest supermarket chain with a market share of 33% as of 2019.
The Fred W. Albrecht Grocery Company, under the trade name Acme Fresh Market, is a grocery store chain based in Akron, Ohio, that has 16 locations in Summit, Portage, Stark, and Cuyahoga counties of Northeast Ohio. It was established in 1891.
Tesco Clubcard is the loyalty card of British supermarket chain Tesco.
Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG ; LID-əl) is a German international discount retailer chain that operates over 12,000 stores across Europe and the United States. Headquartered in Neckarsulm, Baden-Württemberg, the company belongs to the Schwarz Group, which also operates the hypermarket chain Kaufland.
aisle411 Inc. is a St. Louis based company that has developed a consumer service called aisle411, which allows customers to use their phones to find products in stores. Founded in 2008 by Nathan Pettyjohn (Founder) and Matthew Kulig (Co-Founder), aisle411 entered the market in August 2009 with a mobile service that allowed consumers to search retail stores for product locations inside stores using their mobile phones.
Cyriac Roeding is a Silicon Valley-based German-American entrepreneur and investor. He serves as the co-founder and CEO of Earli, an early cancer detection and treatment firm based in Redwood City, California. Earli is based on Synthetic Biopsy technology from Stanford University, and is funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Casdin Capital, Sands Capital, Menlo Ventures, ZhenFund (China) and Marc Benioff. Roeding is also a co-founder and chairman of the board of Rewind Co., a diabetes type 2 reversal company. Roeding's venture investing focuses on AI, brain-to-machine interfaces, consumer businesses, biology meeting software and engineering, and consumer robotics. He served as EVP at Paramount Global / CBS, where he started the division CBS Mobile, and as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins and its iFund with Apple Inc., where he co-founded and led mobile shopping app shopkick to 20 million users and a $250M cash acquisition by SK Telecom/SK Planet. Shopkick rewards users for just walking into retail stores such as Target Corporation, Best Buy, Macy's and Walmart and engaging with products from Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, L'Oreal etc., driving over $1B in sales annually for its partners. Fast Company ranked shopkick one of the world's 10 Most Innovative Companies In Retail, alongside Apple and Starbucks, and Entrepreneur Magazine placed Roeding on its cover.
Clover Rewards is a digital loyalty marketing platform that was launched in April 2011. An alternative to traditional paper and plastic card-based incentive programs, Clover Rewards provides interactive loyalty marketing solutions for businesses. The technology that Clover Rewards is built upon works on mobile phones via app or SMS and allows merchants to reward customers for frequent purchases. Clover Rewards also serves as a direct-marketing platform and analytics tool. Clover Rewards fits into the category of mobile loyalty, a modern type of loyalty program. In summer 2018, Perka was rebranded to Clover, its sister company.
Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. is an American privately held company that operates in the prepaid, gift card and payments industries. It sells branded physical and digital gifts, phones, prepaid debit, and incentives cards online and through a network of global retailers. Blackhawk's network reaches people through a number of different channels including in-store, online, mobile, and incentive. Blackhawk headquarters are in Pleasanton, California and the company was incorporated in 2006.
Ibotta is a North American mobile technology founded by CEO Bryan Leach and company based in Denver, Colorado. Through its mobile application and browser extension, the company provides cashback rewards to users on qualifying purchases including groceries, online shopping, retail purchases, entertainment, travel, restaurant dining, and more.
Amazon Go is a chain of convenience stores in the United States and the United Kingdom, operated by the online retailer Amazon. The stores are cashierless, thus partially automated, with customers able to purchase products without being checked out by a cashier or using a self-checkout station. As of 2023, there are 43 open and announced store locations in Seattle, Chicago, London and New York City.
SK Planet Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SK Telecom, was established in 2011 and is an internet platform development company located in Pangyo, South Korea’s silicon valley with operations in 8 countries. SK Planet was spun off from SK Telecom to focus on online services and has since evolved to focus on three core business services: e-Commerce, Online-to-Offline services, and digital marketing.
Robomart is an American technology company and store-hailing platform headquartered in Santa Monica, California. The company has deployed automated stores on wheels that can be hailed to a customer's home. Instead of delivering products the company delivers the entire store which cuts out order and pickup times giving it advantages over delivery.
A cashierless store is a store which allows customers to shop their products and leave without having to wait in line and pay at a checkout. There are four phases when purchasing from a cashierless store: the before-purchase phase, the check-in phase, the product selection phase, and the check-out phase. Each cashierless store utilizes different combinations of technology within these phases. However, generally cashierless stores use sensor fusion and deep learning for computer vision to keep track of customers and products. Existing cashierless stores can currently be found in the United States, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Trigo is a computer vision technology company founded by Michael and Daniel Gabay in 2018. Trigo provides a cashierless shopping solution for grocery retailers to implement partially or fully automated stores, similar to Amazon Go, which also uses computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion to track items shoppers pick up and put back, as well as their general movement throughout the store.
