When lemonade is better than whisky: investigating the equitableness of a supermarket’s reward scheme

Store incentivisation and reward schemes are an increasingly common aspect of UK grocery retailing with most large‐scale operators investing in such schemes. Despite their popularity many researchers have questioned whether or not store loyalty schemes do, indeed, deliver in terms of encouraging loyalty behaviour from their customers. In this paper the authors take the consumers’ perspective and investigate whether one such scheme (Safeway’s ABC card) “delivers” in terms of equitably rewarding the loyalty of those customers that participate in the scheme. From the analysis it is concluded that the scheme does not appear to be operating in a fair and equitable manner, as consumer fidelity to the scheme is not rewarded above non‐fidelity. Areas of research are identified that may help to discover whether retailers are rewarding the loyalty behaviour of their customers in a fair and ethical way.