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Chapter 2 noted that loyalty card data has become an important tool for grocery retailers. Well-established loyalty schemes generate data and customer insight which have proved fundamental in allowing grocery retailers to understand their customers and adapt their business to meet consumer needs. Chapter 2 highlighted some of the customer and store– level insights that can be gained from analysis of loyalty card data, which are themselves very rarely available for academic investigations. The provision of customer and transaction level data collected by Sainsbury’s (via the Nectar card scheme) allows considerable insight into the nature of consumer expenditure in tourist resorts. These data allow consumer expenditure to be linked to unique customer identifiers, which in turn can be used to provide

an indication of customer spatial origin, geodemographic characteristics and usual consumption habits.

Sainsbury’s were prepared to make 52 weeks’ worth of loyalty card data available for this thesis. This could either be drawn from one store (in order to explore week-by-week sales fluctuations in one store over an entire year), or a total of 52 weeks’ worth of data drawn from the four stores of interest within the study area. The loyalty card data obtained is shown in Table 4.4. Given the degree of seasonality evident at Newquay and Bude, obtaining data from these stores to represent a range of different time-points during the tourist season was important. At almost twice the size of the Bude store, Newquay attracts around twice as many transactions per week (in August). A considerable proportion of the loyalty card data was thus collected for Newquay given the highly seasonal element to trade and the volume of data available. All Nectar card data supplied was for the 2010 calendar year, in common with the store-level data.

A total of 24 weeks’ worth of data were obtained for the Newquay store, representing all school holiday and bank holiday periods, plus a sample of weeks from the low season. This was supplemented by 12 weeks’ worth of data for the Bude store, covering key school holiday periods, along with representative weeks from the low and fringe seasons. As the largest store in the area, 12 weeks’ worth of data was also collected for the Truro store, representing the same weeks from the peak, fringe and low seasons for comparability with Bude. An additional 4 weeks’ worth of data from Bodmin provide a comparison during the low, fringe and peak season for this less-seasonal store. The week is considered to be an appropriate unit of analysis within both the tourist sector and the grocery industry. All store- level data provided by Sainsbury’s was organised by trading week. The week also forms a common unit of time for self-catering holidays, which are predominantly bookable on a weekly basis. Thus, visitor spend can be considered on a week-by-week basis for each store, allowing seasonal variations to be identified.

For the selected weeks and stores of interest, every in-store transaction linked to an active loyalty card has been recorded and made available in its raw format. These data were supplied as a series of excel spreadsheets, each representing one weeks’ worth of transactions in one store. Within each file, every transaction linked to an active loyalty card is listed. Each record contains a unique customer ID numer (related to their loyalty card), the transaction value and the customer home postcode, the latter being based on information provided at registration into the Nectar scheme. An example is shown in Figure 4.5. There were over 4 million transactions recorded across the four study stores during 2010, of which just over 1 million took place during the study weeks. Almost 500,000 of these transactions were attributable to a customer loyalty card, representing just over 100,000 unique customers. These customers form the basis of the analysis reported below, with all non- loyalty card transactions excluded. It must be acknowledged that this dataset represents only a subset of all visitors to the selected destinations and care must be used when considering

the findings. In particular, this dataset only considers those customers holding and using a Nectar card. It is reasonable to assume that loyalty card usage may be lower among visitors as many may not hold a Nectar card (as they frequently shop with an alternative retailer) or may omit to bring or use their loyalty card whilst on holiday away from home.

Table 4.4 - Overview of loyalty card data used for analysis

Week ending Newquay Bude Bodmin Truro

Low Season

23-Jan-2010 X X X X

13-Feb-2010 X

Spring Term School Half Term

20-Feb-2010 X1 X X

Easter

03-Apr-2010 X X X X

10-Apr-2010 X X X

Early Summer – including Whitsun bank holiday and school half term

24-Apr-2010 X 08-May-2010 X 22-May-2010 X X X 29-May-2010 X X X 05-Jun-2010 X X X Early Peak-Season 19-Jun-2010 X X X 10-Jul-2010 X

Peak Summer School Holiday

07-Aug-2010 X 14-Aug-2010 X X X X 21-Aug-2010 X 28-Aug-2010 X X X X 04-Sep-2010 X Late Summer 11-Sep-2010 X 25-Sep-2010 X

Autumn Term School Half Term

30-Oct-2010 X X X

Low-Season

20-Nov-2010 X X X

11-Dec-2010 X

Christmas and New Year

25-Dec-2010 X 01-Jan-2011 X

X Indicates that loyalty card data is held for corresponding week

1

Loyalty card data were obtained for the Newquay store during this week, but inconsistencies in recording mean that they have been omitted from all subsequent analysis.

The Newquay and Bude stores experience lower Nectar card usage than many other Sainsbury’s stores. In each of these stores, and for the corresponding trading year, the proportion of total in-store spend attributable to an active Nectar card was less than 60% (based on Sainsbury’s own analysis) compared to rates commonly above 80% across their store portfolio. This is likely to be a combination of the fact that these stores represent relatively new investments within Sainsbury’s network and also a result of the large numbers of visitors using these stores. As stores that were still establishing themselves within the local retail hierarchy at the time these data were collected, loyalty card use may be yet to reach its potential. Nonetheless, this data set affords a unique opportunity to identify transactions linked to consumers that are thought to originate from outside the stores’ usual catchment area, as outlined in section 4.4.2.

Figure

‎4

5

Extract shown is for the Bude store (week ending 28th August 2010). Inset shows additional sales (in other Sainsbury’s stores) for one selected customer, discussed in section ‎4.6.