Pharmacy and beauty retail is leading the charge when it comes to loyalty programmes in South Africa. Clicks Clubcard has moved into the top spot as the most used loyalty programme at 67%, above 2016 loyalty leader, Pick n Pay Smart Shopper.

Despite a sizeable jump down to 44%, the Dis-Chem Benefits Programme nevertheless ranks as the third most used programme, up from fifth place last year – and together with Clicks shows that loyalty for pharmacy and beauty retail is strong.

These were some of the key developments as revealed by the Truth Loyalty Whitepaper released on Thursday.

The results are from a comprehensive annual snapshot of the loyalty habits of 28,273 adults with a gross monthly household income of R10,000 or more – data collected by WhyFive’s BrandMapp 2017 survey, in partnership with Truth.

With four out of five South Africans now using loyalty, overall the sector is up by 8% from 2016, taking the total number of respondents using loyalty programmes to 79%.

Amanda Cromhout, founder and CEO of Truth, said: “It’s been another tough year for South Africans and political and economic instability invariably ends up hurting our pockets. It’s a valuable opportunity for brands to show support by offering rewards that really meet their customers’ needs.”

Clicks reported earlier in the year that its Clubcard membership base has grown to 6.5 million members and these make up 77.4% of sales, the report said.

“Clicks made a simple but fundamental change to its redemption process – paper-vouchers were replaced with virtual points that can be redeemed as cash-back when you swipe your card at the till. While Clicks and Dis-Chem are among only a handful of brands that do this, it’s a sure-fire mechanism for increasing redemption,” said Cromhout.

FNB and Spur still leading in loyalty in their respective industries, while Edgars Thank U Card retains its spot as the fourth most used programme and Woolworths’ WRewards drops from third to fifth place for 2017.

Top 20 loyalty programmes:

According to the Whitepaper, 74% of men use loyalty programmes, which is 5% points more than in 2016, while 84% of women do, up by 11% points from last year.

The report noted however, that both sexes belong to slightly fewer programmes.

“This is quite interesting and is representative of consumer behaviour. Consumers are becoming more choosy about the programmes with which they engage and this approach makes financial sense. Consumers will reap more from participating fully in fewer programmes, than spreading themselves thin across multiple programmes,” said Cromhout.

The report said that brands need to do their homework about how customers want to be engaged and what they’re prepared to do to earn points.

The results indicate that younger consumers are most willing to complete non-transactional activities such as reading an email or engaging through social media channels with the brand, in exchange for rewards.

In fact, only 6% of respondents between 16-24 years of age indicated they wouldn’t complete any activities for points/rewards.

Taking an online survey is the most preferred activity overall at 59% to earn extra loyalty points while the least popular at 22% is watching a video, the report said.