At a time when gasoline stubbornly stays near $4 per gallon, supermarket and gasoline chains are pairing up on loyalty card programs designed to reward their most committed customers.
Retailers are capitalizing on the use of their store cards and partnering with gasoline chains to create a convenient and value-added way for their customers to shop for groceries and gas.
Approaches range from Big Y’s coin program to computerized, card-based programs at Stop & Shop and Price Chopper. Regardless of the system, stores have made a commitment to simplification and savings that are obvious and real to the customer.
Big Y’s Silver Savings Club card issues silver and gold coins to customers, which can be used on groceries or at nearby gas stations.
“With other programs, you accumulate points — you get the savings once a month or you have to use them before they expire,” said Harry Kimball, Big Y’s director of database marketing. “With ours, you can get them every time you go to the station, so that’s really a big difference. We don’t have that cumulative option, but with us, you can go more frequently to get more savings.”
While Big Y doesn’t have its own gas stations like some Stop & Shop and Price Chopper stores do, the chain offers customers many gasoline options.
“We’ve been able to get really good coverage,” Kimball said. “About 90 percent of our stores have a station within a couple of miles or so.”
Price Chopper has a strong relationship with Sunoco, and Stop & Shop works with Shell stations, but Big Y works with a variety of companies. Kimball said Big Y’s many relationships work for both Big Y and the oil companies.
“We help drive customers to their stations,” Kimball said. “They’re out there seeing some of their competitors partnering up with supermarkets, so they have an interest in having a relationship with a supermarket.”
With more than 200 stores and 60-plus of its own gas stations in New England, Stop & Shop was an early adopter with a straightforward approach: for every $100 spent, customers get 10 cents of per gallon of gasoline. If a customer spends $200, they receive 20 cents off per gallon.
The program has proven popular since it was introduced in 2008, said Suzi Robinson, Stop & Shop’s manager of public and community relations.
“It’s about convenience,” Robinson said. “There’s a lot of value for the customers because you’re automatically earning. People are grocery shopping and gassing up all the time — that’s why it makes so much sense to have gas stations right near our stores as well.”
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