CIES conference: Criado-Perez predicts card retreat

Increasing price competition will force Tesco and Sainsbury to reduce their commitment to costly loyalty card schemes in the coming 12 months. That's the view of Safeway boss Carlos Criado-Perez, who pulled the plug on his own scheme earlier this year. He told a CIES conference in Edinburgh that the UK was going to get even more competitive: "We need to be able to respond to that challenge and give resources to it. A loyalty card is not a very effective way of doing that. "The others will need to do something and use their resouces more effectively." Criado-Perez predicted his rivals would use clever marketing to mask the fact they were changing their loyalty schemes. But he is sure changes will be made. {{NEWS }}