Central puts its faith in Loyalty Card
Central Retail Corporation (CRC), the largest local retail conglomerate, will allocate about Bt8 billion for its "The 1 Card" loyalty-card programme, which will be utilised next year by the company's retail units, aimed at retaining existing shoppers amid
About Bt7 billion of the budget will be spent on offering points and redemption activities to its holders, while the remaining will be spent for advertising and programme management.
Ton Chirathivat, general manager at CRC for information analysis and strategy planning, said that "The 1 Card" is one of the most important marketing tool being used by the company to get customer insights in terms of shopping behaviour.
"With the insights, we are able to intimately approach our products, promotions, services, and other benefits to satisfy their needs," he said.
Ton said that that CRC has operated "The 1 Card" loyalty programme for almost five years with over 3.2 million members being registered so far. The company has achieved more than Bt57 billion of annual sales via "The 1 Card".
Rawee Puapornpong, CRC's vice president for customer relationship management, said that it is more than five years since CRC initiated use of the CRM strategy, coupled with its marketing strategy through a loyalty programme "The 1 Card". Its key objectives are to create a relationship, to meet customers' needs as well as to absolutely satisfy them. "It can be said that The 1 Card is very successful as a CRM strategy in Thai retail industry as the company always sees its customers' response behaviour since five years ago."
"The number of The 1 Card members is constantly increasing; at present we have over 3.2 million members across Thailand. Active members are up to 70-80 per cent, shopping at the Central Retail chain in over 280 locations nationwide - Central Department Store, Zen Department Store, Robinson Department Store, Power Buy, Supersports, B2S, Homeworks and Office Depot. Not only are we understanding our customers more, but we are also giving importance to customer information analysis so that we can truly know their shopping behaviour in order to intimately present them products, promotions, services, benefits and more privileges to meet their needs," said Rawee.
In the sixth year of The 1 Card, CRC yesterday launched a new points-redemption campaign, named "1 for all MODES", to please steady shoppers who have more points. The 1 Card has selected more products, including services, from several alliance shops to fulfil each customer's lifestyle and their needs. "Happiness and entertainment are also added into the programme as we would like to create more enjoyment as well as increase options for The 1 Card members to redeem their accumulated points.
