Having lost its place as the fourth largest UK grocer to Aldi, Morrisons is now trying to recapture market share by upping its focus on personalisation.
How is the company doing this?
By launching an initiative as part of its loyalty offer, it hopes will get people voting with their feet. This initiative involves a trial offering members of their More Card scheme, the opportunity to earn points by purchasing certain brands more frequently. The ‘My Points Boosters’ allow users to choose up to ten brands from a personalised list based on their shopping habits.
For its latest initiative, Morrisons has started using AI to examine its customers’ past shopping behaviour, purchase history and frequency to determine their likelihood of making future purchases with a specific brand. This AI then determines the most effective incentive for that particular customer to continue shopping with that brand.
Rachel Eyre, Morrisons Chief Marketing Officer, believes that this is crucial, as even if two customers are demographically very similar, the offers that each customer receives could be completely different, as they are completely different human beings with different purchasing behaviours and reactions to incentives and rewards.
Eyre believes that the My Points Boosters—currently being trialled by hundreds of thousands of members—works by rewarding incremental behaviours. For customers, it works by showing them Morrisons knows them by giving them offers on brands they already buy.
Customers then have four weeks to accomplish personalised challenges and reach specific milestones. More points can be unlocked as users hit bigger milestones, which can then be converted into Morrison Fivers-£5 vouchers to spend in stores.
In light of this, Eyre believes the potential for growth is enormous as Morrisons now has the opportunity to use its first-party data to understand their customers and thus target them with the right message or right offer in the right place at the right time.
Vivek Rajkhowa 
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