Sure. I love the idea of loyalty programs - ie more data. However, I just feel flybuys as a loyalty program misses for the following reasons:

• Not sure whether sufficient data is being captured to drive niche marketing (ie currently they are largely advertising broadbased offerings "Spend $100 at Coles to earn 3000points", rather than customer specific based on past purchase)
• Still some paperbased marketing happening (eg paper petrol vouchers, paper 'scan at checkout' vouchers)

On top of that, Bunnings and Officeworks are the jewels in the crown for Wesfarmers. They not only have a large retail market share but they have a growing wholesale trade as well as they increase their locations - I'm thinking small soletrader handymen/tradies; and all the SME/micro businesses using Officeworks as a onestop shop for electronics to cleaning to banner printing. So whilst flybuys loyalty is good, I feel there should be something more targeted for the hardware and office staples (data-intelligence-driven of course).

Agreed Flybuys is a behemoth in terms of loyalty programs. For that reason I don't think it is agile enough as it stands. That was my comment about 'missed opportunity'. Lots of energy being driven into integrating Flybuys and general cross-selling without concentrating on the niche markets (in which they are leaders).

But I could be proven wrong and Flybuys could actually be capturing sufficiently detailed data to market to niches! (In fact I hope I'm proven wrong because I am a long term holder of WES.)

Besides the big data aspect, I think Flybuys and Everyday rewards are more about keeping customers in your "ecosystem" of brands. Wesfarmers/Woolworths must have a program because the other one does...

These programs have subtle behavioural aspects. For example, if you walk into a different shopping centre to your usual, do you go to Coles or Woolies? If you use one of the rewards programs more than the other, you are likely to go to that brand.

@Hands

Thanks for your thoughts mate.

I agree and disagree. I use both loyalty programs at Woolworths and Coles, and their apps are very targeted to items we buy once off and regularly, in addition to the generic 'spend $x for x points bonuses'. I think that they still use docket based deals to account for all age brackets, ie the fuel vouchers are available via the docket for neo-luddites, but also loaded onto the loyalty card for tech-minded customers.

I can only assume Flybuys is already thinking the way you are regarding data! They will have a plan to exploit the data gathered on the purchases of individuals and businesses and offer all sorts of deals to encourage additional points accumulation and spend at Bunnings and Officeworks.

I only hold Qantas, Wesfarmers and Coles indirectly through my super, but if I were to hold directly, their established loyalty programs would be a big reason for owning these businesses.