Are retail businesses actually gaining the full benefits of their marketing incentives, if not why not?

Is the loyalty card becoming an outdated incentive or do options exist to widen the format?

With consumer interest in promotional offers increasing, do retail customers have a merely value-oriented outlook these days?

The report provides readers with an up-to-date appraisal of consumer awareness of, and attitudes towards retailers' marketing activities and techniques with particular reference to price discounting and loyalty card schemes. The report is based on the findings of extensive and exclusive consumer research, some of which is ongoing and used to update previous reports on price discounting and loyalty cards with comparative data and trend analysis.

This report takes as its main focus the use of price promotion in its various forms, ranging from EDLP (Everyday Low Pricing) to special offers and from multi buys to the sales. Within the context of the grocery market, the use of budget own-brands is also considered.

Detailed analysis of shoppers' use of and attitudes towards loyalty cards is also included and provides comparative data on the use of loyalty cards. This continues to be a highly contentious subject and one of considerable interest in the wake of Safeway's decision earlier this year to abandon its ABC loyalty card scheme.

This development leads Mintel to assess in the report the extent to which the proposition that:

"The loyalty card is dead, invest in lower prices!"

The report also revisits the following key themes examined by previous reports on discounting and loyalty cards. These include: