Sainsbury’s joins the card game

…Poor old Sainsbury’s. Even when it gets round to launching its own loyalty card, rival Tesco gets all the credit.

The launch of Sainsbury’s Reward Card last week was an excuse for every media pundit in the land to throw back at chairman David Sainsbury the comments he made when Tesco launched its Clubcard loyalty scheme.

Sainsbury dismissed such schemes as “electronic Greenshield stamps”. It is one of those unwise soundbites that comes back to haunt you, like Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time”, Gerald Ratner’s “total crap”, or the Diary’s own “the motorised vehicle will never catch on”.

But what must hurt Sainsbury’s more is the knowledge that it turned down the chance to launch its own clubcard five years ago.