April 06^th 2010:
Dubai

Rewarding customer loyalty is one of the key components of securing return business, and companies like Aswaaq—a leading UAE retail chain—has found that investing in personalized customer attention can bring unforeseen benefits to both the public and shareholders alike. The company’s Wafa Loyalty Program is currently used by over 40,000 subscribers in UAE, marking 63% of aswaaq’s customers —more than double what it was just six months ago.

The company reports a direct increase in sales and footfall numbers in response to Wafa promotions, and Aswaaq’s CEO, Abdul Baset Al Janahi says that these kinds of loyalty programs are an increasingly important method for earning consumer trust. “Rewarding customers through a dynamic program catered to the individual shopper builds a personal connection between the consumer and the brand,” says Mr. Al Janahi. “If you can nurture that relationship in the long-term, there are incredible benefits for both the customer and the business.”

Mr. Al Janahi believes that one of the reasons for the expansion of this program is the communication Aswaaq maintains with its customers. “Through site-specific advertisements, selected email services and SMS campaigns, we can create targeted messages that inform public audiences in a timely and relevant way,”

“Loyalty programs have proven to be effective in the sales performance of many companies and in increasing the consumers’ cumulative purchases. According to a recent research that was done on 1000 companies using Loyalty Programs in the United States, 43% of the respondents confirmed that loyalty programs led to more frequent purchases, and 16% said the programs cause them to choose one company exclusively.”These studies along with the continuous success that Wafa is achieving amongst our customer base drive us to invest further in our programs with the opportunity to measure our promotions according to public sentiment and ongoing customer feedback.”

After the successful campaign in March, which resulted in increasing the sales by 20%, aswaaq launched a new scheme for its customers in the month of April. The scheme will be based on an individual’s monthly purchase statements gathered from the entire network of aswaaq stores and consolidated into a single company-wide database, with no membership and no coupons required. Through this scheme, which is open to all UAE residents, customers can enjoy up to 10% cash back on their monthly purchases.

“When we decided to launch the Wafa program last year, our goal was to use it as a way to thank our customers for choosing to shop at Aswaaq through a series of small rewards and discounts,” comments Al Janahi “Even we were overwhelmed by the positive response of our customers.” Given Dubai’s very competitive retail market, aswaaq is now putting increased effort into analyzing the correlation between loyalty promotions and customer sales habits, and feels that this is the best method for growing the brand locally.

Aswaaq has launched two new offers in March including a 10% discount for Wafa Card members on every AED 500 spent. Another interesting offers was the 10 -10 -10 promotion which ran on a span of 10 days giving the customers an AED 10 cash back for every AED 100 they spent. “We believe in rewarding our customers and sharing the benefits with them as a way to increase loyalty to the brand and to the shopping experience they live at aswaaq. Since we launched Wafa, we have developed many offers and promotions that played a key role in increasing the footfall and the sales throughout aswaaq’s supermarkets,” concluded Al Janahi.