Retailers battling Amazon for Christmas shoppers

Retailers will be relying even more on loyalty cards this Christmas as they fight off competition from Amazon and other online stores.

Discounts, free bottles of wine and gift vouchers are some of the deals on offer as loyalty cards are used to lure shoppers into bricks-and-mortar stores.

And with the retail marketing spend down this festive season as they await the impact of Amazon’s launch here, loyalty cards will take on a more important role, says Stocard’s Radinck van Vollenhoven.

“I think it’ll be crucial to engage with customers and actually provide that experience and extra reason to go into bricks and mortar so having a strong loyalty offering is going to be crucial to driving that store traffic in the run up to Christmas,” he said.

He says the majority of retail sales in Australia occur offline but that is shifting and with the entrance of new online players in the market, bricks and mortar will have to work harder to attract and keep customers.

Stocard is a free app that stores all your loyalty cards on your smart phone, eliminating the need to carry lots of cards in your wallet.

The other benefit is if you turn the location services on, it will message you with customised deals when you’re close to one of the stores you have a loyalty card for.

They’ve just signed up their 2 millionth member in Australia.

Mother-of-three Michelle House says she saves hundreds of dollars using her loyalty cards – she has about 15 covering supermarkets, department stores and general retailers like Spotlight, Officeworks and Boost Juice.

She says she gets notified of new deals which she regularly takes advantage of to save the family budget some cash.