Tescos founder, Jack Cohen, waded in with these incentives in the 60s, and became the first store to offer them as an inducement to grab customer loyalty.



Nowadays of course, much less costly and non time consuming (can you remember or imagine sticking pages and pages of green shield stamps, then finding the nearest Green Shield Stamp store - now known as Argos by the way!)

Customer loyalty these days consists of Store Loyalty cards, so from Tescos you get points for every pound spent, that means every month you get sent vouchers to spend in any Tesco Store.

Other supermarket giants, like Sainsbury's, offer the "Nectar Card", where every time you spend in that shop, you get "Nectar Points" , that , unlike the Tesco card, you can use in many different types of store. Not only that, you can redeem your Nectar Points for cash, or even for products from what was the old Green Shield Stamp outlet, as we said earlier now known as the Argos Store. (From the Greek: "Argos", Ulysses' faithful dog)

But, more and more people are buying goods and services in a different manner these days, much to the dismay of these large stores. Growth in internet on-line sales - already huge - is set to soar through the roof over the next few years, as technology improves, and more and more people have access to the internet.

So, as more and more products become available on-line (including from large stores such as Next for instance), a new revolution is quietly taking place.

With am expanding range of products and services, from fashion, laptops, mobile phones, holidays, car loans -you name it - with fierce competition, more and more people are looking for 'virtual stores' that sell everything at the best possible prices.

Which brings us back full circle to customer loyalty.

Customers are still looking for bargains, and stores are still looking to get customers to be more than one-off purchasers. They want your custom for life if possible. So how do they do that, apart from offering excellent delivery and after sales service, as well as the best prices?

More and more internet outlets are offering a commission - small as it is - on everything purchased, so that the customer gains twice in effect.

But there's more!

I am sure you have heard of social networking, and outfits like the social networking website FaceBook for instance, who now have over 7 MILLION registered users in the UK, most of who signed up last year.

Well, the next shopping revolution is going to come about when on-line stores start to give not just the best prices on every purchase, and a small commission as well, but can you imagine if they also gave you a small commission off every customer that you introduce to them?

Sounds far-fetched, but with modern-day technology, everything is possible, and, at such a low cost to administer, really feasible. Can you imagine, if such a scheme were to be launched, with the power of social networking, how quickly such a system would spread?

Come on you mammoth stores - who is going to be the first to launch such a scheme!