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Purvita Chatterjee

Mumbai, Sept. 29 Employee incentive and loyalty solutions providers such as Accor Services and Sodexo India are now targeting modern trade retailers with their programmes.

Accor Services recently bagged loyalty programmes for retailers such as Tommy Hilfiger and Wills Lifestyle, and is now moving on to big retailers such as Reliance Retail with its programmes. Mr Sandeep Banerjee, Managing Director & CEO, Accor Services, said: “We have already had high-level negotiations with Reliance Retail and now it depends on how it would like to build its loyalty programme and take it further.”

Reliance Retail currently offers its loyalty scheme under the name Reliance One and Accor Services is hoping to partner the retailer in the near future.

Currently, Accor Services provides its loyalty services through a separate company — Surf Gold — which it acquired in 2007. Mr N. Ramasubramani, Regional Director, Loyalty Marketing, Surf Gold, said: “We have got the mandate to create the loyalty programme for the entire ITC group of companies and not just Wills Lifestyle outlets”.

Accor’s competitor Sodexo India is also looking at partnering retailers with its loyalty programmes. Mr Ashish Talwar, CEO, Sodexo India, said: “While we already have our loyalty programmes, we intend coming up with a specific product to cater to the retail segment.

“The purpose is to partner both big and mid-sized retailers and help them expand their base of consumers.”

Sodexo India is planning to approach both established retailers who already have loyalty programmes in place such as Shoppers Stop, HyperCity and Lifestyle, as well as the relatively smaller retailers who have yet to launch their loyalty programmes.

“We will approach the big retailers to see what value we can add to their existing loyalty programmes.

“At the same time, there could be mid-sized retailers such as Metro Shoes, with whom we could work to create loyalty programmes,” said Mr Talwar.

With the purpose of devising loyalty programmes across group companies, Sodexo India, like Accor Services, is also planning to have a presence across big business houses.

As Talwar says, “We intend operating our loyalty card on a common platform for big companies, which would help them attract more customers across the group companies”.

Currently, most retailers either manage their own loyalty programmes or have direct marketing companies to support their programmes.

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