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Shanthi Venkataraman

Loyalty cards: Beyond mere shopping.

SHOPPING, it turns out, is not always enjoyable, especially if you have a taste for big brands and fancy shopping malls. If you shun crowds and like to wander leisurely along aisles on a normal weekday, your purchases may burn a big hole in your wallet.

Shopping off season or during a clearance sale can be a harrowing experience, what with disorganised merchandise, crowds and serpentine queues at the billing counter.

But there need not necessarily be a trade off between better prices and a better shopping experience. It turns out, you can have both.

Every departmental store or retail chain worth its salt now offers a loyalty card. Lifestyle, for instance, has a loyalty programme called `The Inner Circle', while Pantaloons offers what it calls a `Green Card'.

Rewards programmes, such as `Club West' from Westside and `First Citizen' from Shopper's Stop, also in competition to woo the customer. So what do you get in exchange for your unswerving loyalty?

Enrolling

Getting one of these cards is easy. Run up a bill of Rs 2500 or thereabouts, in stores such as Lifestyle, Westside, or Pantaloon or even at a Titan showroom or a Landmark bookstore and you win yourself a membership card.

Remember, your eligibility for the card will be pegged to purchases on a single occasion.

Consider clubbing your bills with those of your friends or family members to ramp up your bill size.

If you are not likely to be spending so much at one go, you also have the option of buying the card for a small fee. In most of these outlets, you can purchase the card for about Rs 150.

Some retailers also offer associate cards for your family members for a fee. Pantaloons' Green Card automatically extends benefits to the entire family. Landmark offers a Fellowship rewards programme.

You can get an add-on card Fellowship Junior for your child and Fellowship Legend for your parents.

A common incentive that all these cards offer is reward points — similar to what you earn on credit card spends. Typically, for every Rs 50 you spend, you earn one reward point. If you are not too brand-conscious, you could pick up one of the in-store labels at Shopper's Stop and earn higher reward points. Once you accumulate a certain number of points, you are given a gift voucher, which can be used to purchase goods within the store or, in some cases, set off against your bill.

Most retailers allow you to redeem your points only at their own outlets.

Titan's Signet Club is an exception, offering gift vouchers from other brands and stores such as Raymond, Shopper's Stop, Music World and so on. If you are a part of Westside's Club West programme, you may from time to time get discounts from its programme partners such as Voltas.

The strings attached

Be sure, though, to get a handle on how and when these reward points accumulate and can be redeemed, before going on a buying binge.

For instance, with Landmark's Fellowship programme, you automatically become a member once you make a same-day purchase of Rs 2500. But you begin to earn reward points only after you make purchases worth Rs 10,000 in a year.

Also, Lifestyle does not award points for purchases made during sales or special offers. You would have to check the validity period within which you can redeem your reward points as well.

Pantaloons, Shopper's Stop and Westside also offer upgrades in their rewards programme, where a certain amount of purchases will entitle to a higher level of benefits.

For one, you get to accumulate reward points faster. For instance, if you are a Green Card Five Star member at Pantaloons, you earn one reward point for every Rs 25 spent as against one for every Rs 50 spent at the entry level.

But reward points alone are certainly not incentive enough to get you to purchase such a card. After all, credit cards offer you both reward points as well as the option to redeem them across any retailer or restaurant of your choice.

What you get beside reward points?

Special shopping hours during a sale, free alteration of your clothes, home delivery and free movie tickets are some of the add-ons that these cards promise. But not all of the freebies that are promised may be really useful to you.

If you are tired of the mad rush during a sale, you are in luck if you are a Pantaloons Green Card member. You get to enjoy exclusive shopping hours two days before a sale is thrown open. Besides getting to shop in peace, you also get to grab all the goodies before the rest. But you would have to be a really early riser if you want to take advantage of Club West's `special' shopping hours during sales. The chain expects you to get there at 8 a.m. on `Sale' days, if you want to get that trouser you have been eyeing, before other shoppers get to it.

Shopper's Stop and Pantaloons have special billing counters for card members. Shopper's Stop throws in free parking for your car as you shop if you own their First Citizen card. If you are a Club West Gold (Westside) or a Golden Glow First Citizen (Shopper's Stop) cardholder, you get free delivery and alteration of clothes. Green Card Three Star and Five Star members also get free delivery of their purchases.

Does it pay to be loyal?

You need to a compulsive shopper to make the best of the loyalty cards. If you visit the store just once a year or like to comparison shop, these cards may not have too much to offer.

Besides some of the more attractive perks such as reserved parking and home delivery are offered only if you are at an upgraded level in a rewards programme and an `upgrade' usually requires you to run up a few really big bills.

You would have to buy stuff worth Rs 40,000 during your membership period, if you want to enjoy the benefits of a Golden Glow First Citizens cardholder. Co-branded credit cards, on the other hand, appear to be worth exploring. There are not many retailer-credit card issuer tie-ups right now. First Citizen Citibank Card and ICICI Bank's tie-up with Big Bazaar come to mind.

First Citizen Citibank Card offers double the reward points on purchases at Shopper's Stop. It also offers a three-month zero-per cent EMI (equated monthly instalment) scheme to ease the burden of truly heavy-duty purchases. Besides, you get to earn reward points when you spend at other retailers as well.

To maximise use of your loyalty card:

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