It would be possible to have loyalty system without computers,
something is needed to record how many points a customer has,
in the past this could be done with stamps or tokens. The
problem with this system though is that it is time consuming,
people have to count or check how many stamps or tokens people have, the
stamps and tokens could also be copied, most importantly it
would be impossible without computers to monitor what people
are buying, with stamps and tokens people can share the collection and
so this reduces the loyalty benefits.
How Loyalty Cards Work Use Of Data What the supermarkets get What the customers get
The way in which most of the loyalty cards work is very similar,
the Tesco system which is described in The Tesco
Clubcard leaflet (page 2, Tesco leaflet):
"The Clubcard holders hand their cards to the checkout operator
before their shopping is scanned and the points are added
electronically to their Clubcard account. The points are converted
every quarter into Tesco Clubcard money-off vouchers."
"The vouchers are sent every quarter to the Clubcard holder's
home address and can be used to pay for shopping on another visit."
There are many possible uses for the data, to get the
most from the data though, it must be communicated in some way.
There are three main ways of doing this, as the raw data,
graphs/charts or with a Geographic Information System.