About 56.4 per cent of Canadians have a smart phone, which is a lot of Canadians. But that means 44.6 per cent don't have them. And that 44.6 per cent might as well forget about engaging in the Loblaws PC Plus reward program.
Launched in March, one of Canada's highest profile retailers has created the lowest profile loyalty program.
Admittedly, there are signed offers in stores. I found three points offers after about 45 minutes of searching around the Loblaws at Dundas and Bloor in Toronto. For example, I could earn 400 points buying $5 worth of bottled curry. That's about 40 cents worth of shopping when I hit a points threshold--20,000 points get you $20 in groceries.
But the real action is on your phone. Each week I get supposedly customized offers in an online account. There, the point accumulation can be impressive. 1,000 points for each $5 spent on fresh produce--that's about 20 per cent off. Buy $100 worth of produce and get $20 back. Or 1,000 points for a $2.29 bottle of flavoured water--that's 40 per cent off. The digital offers are far superior--and far more abundant, from what I can tell--than the bricks and mortar offers.
But unless you a master memorizer, you must carry a smart phone with you to exploit the rewards. Otherwise, you'd have no idea what your offers are as you wander the aisles.
Which raises the question: who is PC Plus for? Not for everybody. Lower income Canadians can't afford cell phones. Seniors often don't have them. And even then, who walks around a grocery store flicking through items on their phone to see if they match up with what they might buy? Probably not parents with their kids or people in a rush.
It is certainly following a trend. PC Plus is a step toward gamefication--it makes shopping like a treasure hunt, where you must match the items you're sent with what's available. But it's needless complicated. The threshold to entry is way too high.
Technical glitches make things worse. When I bought my $6.02 worth of produce, I saw that I hadn't received my points. I was told that "digital produce offers" (ask someone from 1992 to parse that term) sometimes don't register properly. So I had to call customer service which, moments after I went through the checkout, was able to call up my receipt to see that I had bought more than $5 in produce. They promptly issued me my points and I thought, wow, he exactly what I'm having for dinner!
Obviously, chasing loyalty points is something you need money to do. But introducing a loyalty program that serves only the most diligent and connected Canadians seems ridiculously exclusive for a mainstream retailer. It's almost as if Loblaws is saying: If you can't afford a smart phone, you can't afford to shop here.