I heard earlier today from a Walgreens employee who was upset over the planned move this fall to loyalty cards to replace the Register Rewards program. When Walgreens ran this program in test markets, it was very easy to see that those people earning points got the shaft when compared to the RR-earners.
So now we have a company whose management team has taken their geriatric customer base and forced them to go online for half the new sales ad, buy two items to get the best price (rather more product than they want) and now force them to use a loyalty card to buy those same items. Oh, but you earn points and can save up for valuable prizes! woot!
So toss all those ingredients into the retail pot, together with a huge helping of pissing match with Express Scripts and Medco and a milder than usual flu season and what do you have? Walgreens sales have tanked and honestly, I don’t know if our purchases will be enough to support them.
Does the loyalty card impose limits per card like cvs.
It’s not even like ECB. You earn points back on the card and have to redeem the points later. Everyone in the test markets HATED it.
So we’ll be seeing some really great CVS deals come fall then? I’m sure they’ll want to capitalize on the lost souls scrounging for the deals! psst. hey CVS, lighten up on the limits and see what happens come fall!
Wow – I don’t like the loyalty card program idea at all – it seems doomed to fail. I also don’t understand the benefit of listing their “bonus buys” only on their web-site, and not in the flyer – what a pain in the ass, and for those that don’t coupon regularly, what’s their lure to shop there? There are articles that state that Wags is planning on selling health insurance – maybe that focus, and low profit margins are why they are making these severe changes. I don’t want to see Walgreen’s fail – it’s based in Illinois, and it’s demise would most likely have a negative impact on the already troubled Illinois economy. Even so, I’ll take my business to CVS if there is no incentive for me to shop at Walgreen’s. Thanks for letting me chime in my two cents!