Green Shield Stamps pop up on mobile phones

A SCHEME equivalent to the old Green Shield stamps loyalty programme has been launched for mobile phones. With Shop Scan Save, instead of stamps, barcodes and texts will be sent to mobile handsets.

The scheme has been successfully trialed in Jackson's Hull where the redemption rate was around 20 per cent compared to a norm of around two to four per cent.

There's a twist, however, because the company in charge of collating all the data, The Light Agency, will be using the scheme to build profiles on participants.

To sign up, consumers simply send the word 'join' to 62111. The system then tries to work out exactly what kind of handset you possess - in the INQ's case, we simply agreed that the handset was indeed a Nokia.

Once the process is completed, participants will receive a special barcode on their phones. Then, as soon as Dhop Scan Save gets going in earnest, consumers will start to receive offers by text in an attempt to lure them to the nearest Co-op (which used Green Shield stamps), Spar, Costcutter or Londis.

To redeem the offer you simply show the barcode to the checkout person who scans it in via the till in the standard fashion. Here's the twist - The Light Agency will receive details of everything you purchased at the time.

That means it will know what brand of washing up liquid you bought - potentially opening up the chance to text you with an offer to defect to another brand.

The actual data side of this scheme is being handled by PayPoint but there's no indication who's in charge of all the SMS and MMS fulfilment which will be necessary to get the whole thing to work properly.

Shop Scan Save may reveal, for example, just how many ordinary consumers have never bothered to get MMS/picture messaging to work on their phones. µ

L'INQ
Shop Scan Save