Come weekend and you have a long shopping list. Groceries and vegetables to stock up your kitchen, odds and ends for your house, clothes for the kids who are growing just too quickly and a book or two for yourself.

How can you make the most of all the shopping? Enter loyalty programmes.

A loyalty programme gives you benefits from shopping at a particular store. The lucrative benefit for most is usually the points earned.

An added benefit of a loyalty programme is the discount-season and other promotional offers, which typically open first to you and then to the public at large.

Other benefits, especially at higher membership levels, include door-delivery of your purchases, valet parking, extra reward points on birthdays and anniversaries.

You can become a part of a loyalty programme either by racking up a one-time bill of a specified amount – buy worth Rs 2,000 at one time in Westside, for instance, to become a Club West member; or buy a membership card. There are no costs associated with loyalty programmes, barring some such as Hero MotoCorp’s Goodlife.

Worth it or not

While loyalty programmes may be tempting, understand that the amount and frequency with which you spend makes a lot of difference in benefiting from the programme.

A Lifestyle Inner Circle Silver membership, for example, will net you 2 points for every Rs 100 spent. But each point is worth only 60 paise.

You need a minimum of 166 points to start claiming anything, which means you have to make purchases worth Rs 8,300 to earn Rs 99.6. In the more basic membership programme, accumulated points and membership expires within 12 months. This makes it rather hard to squeeze any benefit out of shopping here.

But consider programmes such as BP’s PetroBonus. Rs 150 spent on Speed petrol will earn 25 points. Or Star Bazaar’s Clubcard, where Rs 200 spent gets one point, equal to Re 1 in value. Filling up a vehicle tank, or buying household and kitchen staples are done very often, and amount spent in these areas quickly add up.

You are thus more likely to benefit well from these loyalty programmes. Being loyal to shops such as Big Bazaar or Star Bazaar may also be easier since they offer a wide range of products.

Secondly, even if you buy membership cards or get one based on your first spend at a particular store, such buying will make you only a basic member. Upgrading into higher levels requires crossing a spending threshold.

Spending Rs 15,000 in 12 months at Lifestyle, for example, will graduate you into the Gold membership level from Silver.

Thirdly, for purchases to register, you need to necessarily produce the membership card at billing.

This can get a little cumbersome if you are a member of multiple programmes, or make spur-of-the-moment shopping decisions. Retailers are slowly adopting mobile-based applications to circumvent this requirement.

Way out

Is there an easier way to get something extra out of your shopping bills? Consider programmes such as Payback (free membership). Payback ties up with multiple retailers such as MakeMyTrip, Big Bazaar, HPCL, Flipkart, Bata, Dominos, to name a few. Purchases at these retailers will net you reward points, redeemable at Payback.

Since the list of retailers is quite long, you will be able to generate points much more quickly.

Plus, you only need to carry one membership card. Points expire three years from accumulation, giving plenty to time to gather points for a pricier item on Payback’s catalogue.

Besides, why not go for women-oriented debit or credit cards that offer cash-backs on shopping?

For instance, HDFC Bank’s Women’s debit card gives cash backs of up to Rs 750 a month. These benefits are in addition to those earned on the loyalty programmes themselves – you’re actually pulling in dual rewards for the same purchase.

>bhavana.acharya@thehindu.co.in

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