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for Christmas.’ (Even though it’s only January.)
    Finally, this type of customer has a lot of patience. On each trip, she meticulously checks all round the store to make sure she doesn’t miss any bargains. But it’s at the till that she really needs patience. She will require a receipt for every item covered by the money-back guarantee as proof of purchase. You do the maths: thirty items, thirty receipts and about fifteen minutes’ patience (and more if she pays by card, cash, cheque and voucher, and alternates payment methods).
    And when this bargain hunter comes to your till you’re always a bit nervous. Is she nice? Does she know her way around the system? Otherwise, she might wait until you’ve scanned all the items (35), told her the total amount due (£52.38), asked for a loyalty card (twice because she didn’t answer the first time) before saying ‘Oh, I need a separate receipt for each item!’
    So what if lots of people are waiting? That’s not her problem. All the bargain customer wants is thoseinfamous receipts, the open sesame for the money-back guarantee.
    Luckily, the regulars come at quiet times and love sharing their discoveries with the checkout girls.
    And bargain customers must be very good cooks. Making something every day out of sardines in oil (‘30 points on your loyalty card’) and cheese-flavoured crisps (‘Win a trip to Center Parcs’), or coffee (‘3 for the price of 4’) and tomato sauce (‘45% free’) is not easy. And spaghetti hoops (‘money-back guarantee!’) eight times a month is nice but won’t you get tired of it the following month?

THE WONDERFUL LOYALTY CARD IN ALL ITS COMPLICATED SIMPLICITY
    What’s the point? There isn’t one, or not much of one (don’t kid yourself – it won’t make you a millionaire). It’s just an ingenious way to encourage customers to come back to a particular store instead of going to their competitors. Yes, you can win a cuddly toy with 3,000 points (1 point for every pound spent in store), a darts board with 5,000 points, a plastic fruit-bowl with 10,000 points, a trip to Eurodisney in the raffle, a portable DVD player (that breaks after a week) with 90,000 points and £25 or a gift voucher worth £5 which is only valid for special offers … Really makes you want to fight tooth and nail to get that supermarket loyalty card, doesn’t it? And makes it imperative that you goout and buy as many products as possible as often as possible.
    But that’s just scratching the surface of what the loyalty card can give you. It also offers amazing vouchers:50p for a box of washing powder worth £9.98 or a refund for one item if you buy five others the same – as long as you have the card and come back and spend the amount you won in the store the next day (I always admire the simplicity of their explanations, don’t you?). Then there are the special-offer days when cardholders (aren’t they lucky?) can buy more to spend more.
    But never, ever forget the expiry date for your precious points or your voucher because, if you go over the expiry date, you will lose all the benefits you have stored up with such effort over the months or even years and you can kiss goodbye to that pack of playing cards, that synthetic teddy bear or that fondue set …
    I admire the way the marketing people in supermarkets so readily (or should that be so disdainfully?) assume that their customers will react to loyalty cards like children who have been presented with a Kinder Surprise. But, given the success of loyalty cards, consumers do seem to have rediscovered their inner child. And today ‘the card’ is essential. The more you have (any of them), the more you feel the company belongs to you. But above all, if we didn’t have loyalty cards the checkout girlswouldn’t have anything to say to the customer. (‘How does it work?’ ‘Why doesn’t it give me anything?’ ‘How many points do I