The conference Retail in Detail/Loyalty over Gold discussed the ways to increase loyalty in retail

Since longer, the specialized conference from the Retail in Detail series has not seen such a record number of participants. This year’s even with the topic of Loyalty over Gold (took place on September 30, 2009 in andel’s hotel in Prague) attracted 170 participants and 15 speakers. The highest relevance of the topic for today’s retail business has been also confirmed by a very intensive discussion during the event and by the feedback delivered via research among participants. Survey has collected very useful comments on the program, both positive and critical.

Conference program has signalized that the implementation of loyalty schemes in the Czech and Slovak markets is still in an early stage. As different speakers mentioned several times, the break point is the recent launch of TESCO loyalty scheme. This “by far the most sophisticated solution in the market“ was presented by Dan Dures of dunnhumby and got one of the best evaluations among the speakers. Apart from him, the best evaluation was given to representatives from research and consulting agencies, namely Jaroslav Kuchař (Blue Strategy), Zdeněk Skála (Incoma-GfK), Marcus Jurman (GfK Austria) and Ján Bizík (PricewaterhouseCoopers). These speeches were appreciated as „interestingly presented theories“ and „stimulating presentations with lots of case studies and hard facts“.

On the other hand, conference participants mostly criticized the speakers from companies operating loyalty schemes. Obviously it was not easy to fulfil high expectations as the programs are just in early stages and clear results cannot be demonstrated yet. Still there was one principal exception - the speech of Daniel Šturm from Česka spořitelna that was evaluated as the very best one („most interactive and educative“, „practical, clear, useful“ - „of course a bit of promotion of own program but in this case it made sense“).

Retail in Detail/ Loyalty over Gold conference has, in spite of some weak moments, shown how to go forward in this area. Key conclusion is that customer loyalty is by no means an automated output of loyalty scheme but a result of the right customer targeting and right marketing mix choices based on that. Definitively something to continue the discussion on within next events on loyalty, as well as other future specialized conferences and summits organized by Blue Events.

Contact: Antonín Parma (antonin.parma@blueevents.eu)