News

Inter-Act lands new loyalty program

March 26, 2002

SHEFFIELD, UK -Inter-Act Systems UK Ltd. landed a contract to set up a kiosk loyalty program with the Meadowhall Centre, Sheffield shopping center.

This program is the shopping center's first venture into interactive loyalty cards. It means 20 more kiosks for Inter-Act. Inter-Act already maintains 2,800 loyalty kiosks in nearly 700 Sainsbury's supermarkets and Boots pharmacies. The program, called Go Shop, starts this July.

Go Shop rewards loyalty in order to encourage customers to spend more and visit more often. Shoppers will receive special retail offers targeted to them from more than 200 participating retailers within the center and by some vendors not in the center. Retailers can run seasonal or product promotions on the system.

In addition to accepting offers, shoppers can use the machines to view a store directory and a map, and to search for products.

Meadowhall's marketing manager Kate Mason said that the program was tested first on the Centre's Web site. Success on the Web led to the agreement to go ahead with Go Shop.

Inter-Act is designing the kiosks to use its new application hosting environment, software that makes it possible to use Internet-based applications.

Like most loyalty systems, this one will gather shopper information for a customer database. It will allow Meadowhall to track visits and shopping habits on which it can base its rewards. Retailers who run a promotion through the system will also have the benefit of being able to track a promotion's success.

Inter-Act Systems was founded in the U.S. in 1993 and began European operations in 1997.

About 270 retailers have shops in the Meadowhall Centre, owned by British Land. The Centre receives 30 million visitors a year.