Loyalty programmes: what will the next three decades in retail bring

August 04, 2025

In 1995, a little card fundamentally changed how retailers would understand their customers for decades to come. Tesco's Clubcard, one of retail's earliest comprehensive loyalty programmes, transformed shopping from anonymous transactions to valuable data, creating an entirely new approach to customer engagement.

Three decades later, the data once collected to give retailers an edge over the competition by upping visits now presents a wealth of lucrative retail media opportunities. So, what's next in loyalty? Are traditional points-based systems still effective? And how can businesses harness the goldmine of first-party data while maintaining consumer trust?

Continue reading with Retail-Week.