Catalina Marketing, the company that introduced the concept of reactive couponing at checkout counters, today introduces a concept aimed at adding sales punch to store circulars.
My Favorite Deals calls on the purchase histories of loyalty club members at retailers to deliver them five relevant deals from the store circular. The behavioral strategy is to select items in categories they are most likely to purchase on their next trip.
“Today the average shopper buys just 0.7% of the UPC’s in a supermarket, and that same correlation holds true for the circular,” says Marla Thompson, SVP of strategy for Catalina. “What Catalina does is sort through hundreds of deals in a circular and find the best fits for individual shoppers. Our preference engine considers brand purchases and category purchases, as well as where the consumer is in that purchase cycle.”
Thompson notes that retailers in the U.S. spend $6 billion dollars on their circulars annually and that 66% of shopping baskets do not contain even one circular-promoted item in a given week. In a pilot test of My Favorite Deals with a large chain Catalina would not name, the reactive system returned an average weekly sales lift of 1.5% on circular items to targeted shoppers.
“This program is an ‘and’ to circulars; it’s not meant to replace them,” Thompson said. She anticipates a high acceptance rate for the new program, since it will require no hardware or system upgrades to the Checkout Coupon systems currently installed at 28,000 locations in the U.S.
