Beefeater ditches Tesco Clubcard, joins Nectar |
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Published
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Sat, 09 Jul 2005 11:05
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Tesco Clubcard became poorer by one member when Beefeater, its partner in the card scheme decided to shift its businesses to Tesco's rival Nectar, which operates the Loyalty card scheme.
Beefeater's presence takes Nectar's sponsors up to 17, as compared to rival Tesco that has 11 partners.
With Beefeater, Nectar now has three Whitbread brands under its umbrella; Brewers Fayre and Brewsters being the other two in the earn-and-redeem scheme. The signing up of Beefeater will be splashed across the 156 chains owned by the group and will also be branded on the quarterly Nectar mailings.
Loyalty Management UK, the company that operates Nectar has indicated that it is in talks with other Whitbread brands. But Brian Sinclair, Loyalty's client services director refused to reveal exactly which retailers he wanted to sign up. He did say that he was keen to add another two sponsors to the scheme this year and mentioned that mortgage providers, chemists, DIY chains and booksellers among the prime targets. Sinclair said that he wanted to take the number of sponsors to 25 by the end of this year.
It is interesting to note that the Whitbread-owned hotel chain, the Marriott, happens to be a key member of the Tesco card scheme. But Marriott has indicated that it was not considering shifting to Nectar.
Whitbread also has a strong presence in the Pizza Hut, coffee shop Costa, TGI Friday's and the Premier Travel Inn.
Meanwhile, Nectar, which has a 13m strong membership, has announced plans to launch its first credit card called the Nectar Credit Card. This card is expected to be launched sometime in September from American Express.
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