DUBLIN— Offering rewards via a loyalty card may be a way retailers can differentiate themselves from competitors, as a new report released by Research and Markets found these coalition loyalty programs only have a 13-percent penetration rate at the retail level. Usually, coalition-based loyalty programs occur when merchants group together to offer cash or other rewards.
“Global Retailer Cards: Co-Branded, Loyalty and Private Label Programs" is a report, based on a survey of 6,280 prominent retail brands in 65 countries, about the provision of payment cards and loyalty programs by major retailers around the world. Retailer participation in coalition loyalty schemes is also considered.
The report also noted the 1,945 retail chains surveyed who offer their own payment cards can be segmented by payment network. In fact, 17.0 percent of retailer cards are affiliated on an exclusive basis to the Visa network with 13.6 percent linked in the same fashion to the MasterCard brand. However, the report said as many as 42.5 percent of retailers with their own payment cards offer one or more private label products only. Furthermore, 18.7 percent of the retailers offering payment cards promote cards that are linked to more than one of these networks either by offering two separate cards or, in a few cases, because a single card carries more than one brand.
In total, the research identifies 1,945 retailer payment cards, more than 2,500 proprietary retailer loyalty programs and more than 100 coalition loyalty schemes, thereby providing a definitive, worldwide analysis of retailer co-branded, loyalty and private label programs that goes far beyond the scope of previous published research. Moreover, the PartnerBASE database that accompanies the report details each of the many initiatives for retailer credit, deferred debit, debit and rechargeable pre-paid cards traced by Finaccord, specifying the operating models used by retailers, the payment networks to which the cards are affiliated and the identity of the ultimate card issuers in each case.