Clubcard ‘safe’ as legal war hots up

Clubcard safe as legal war hots upSpeculation that Tesco’s new boss – “drastic Dave Lewis” – could ditch the Clubcard loyalty scheme would appear wide of the mark after the retailer launched a new legal battle to trademark the name.
Tesco’s first attempt to register Clubcard was rejected in December 2013 on the grounds it was “devoid of any distinctive character” and was “commonly used by third parties”.
But now the retail giant is to appeal to the Intellectual Property Office at a hearing this week, calling on the IPO to reverse its decision.
The move would appear to finally put to bed speculation about the scheme’s future, despite calls from some analysts to ditch the programme, estimated to cost the retailer about £500m a year to operate.
Clubcard’s influence runs deep at the retailer; since first hooking up with DunnHumby in the early Nineties the scheme has expanded beyond a customer reward programme and is now instrumental in driving everything from stock control to store planning.
One industry source recently told DecisionMarketing: “To sideline all that insight would be suicidal. If anything, it should boost spend on Clubcard rather than throw money at price cuts. It has 17 million customers signed up to the scheme – that’s nearly a third of the UK population – if it can get them to shop more often, that’s half the job done.”
And Lewis is no stranger to a data-led approach; his former employer Unilever recently implemented its first enterprise data warehouse, which has enable it to build real-time customer data on a global scale to drive its entire operation.

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