Morrisons Shine loyalty programme to reward fresh food purchases

The supermarket has trademarked a number of names for the scheme, including Morrisons Shine, Morrisons Yello and Morrisons Match and More. A Morrisons spokesperson says the supermarket is still looking at a number of different loyalty mechanisms, including points-based and price matching, before it launches the programme across its stores later this year.

However, Marketing Week understands that the supermarket is leaning towards the name Morrisons Shine and is to begin testing that scheme with a select number of customers in a small number of stores in the next month. It will offer customers points in return for spending, similar to schemes already on the market including Tesco’s Clubcard and Sainsbury’s Nectar.

Morrisons aims to differentiate through a focus on fresh food, offering more rewards for buying fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and fish. That ties in with a wider push by the supermarket on fresh food, with the firm giving greater prominence to fresh food in its stores and recent marketing campaigns promoting its Market Street proposition.

It also owns much of its supply chain and last year became the largest fresh food manufacturer in the UK, meaning it is well positioned to take advantage of economies of scale if it can boost fresh food sales.

The move into loyalty is the latest attempt by Morrisons to turn around declining sales, which fell by 7.1 per cent in the first quarter, which some analysts have described as the biggest decline by a supermarket in a generation. It has already announced a £300m investment in price, supported by a multi-million pound “I’m Cheaper” marketing campaign, to boost sales and mitigate the rise of the discounters Aldi and Lidl.

It is also making a push into ecommerce and convenience, set to expand its online grocery service to London on Monday (12 May) and open a further 11 M Local stores this year to take its total to 200.