Retail Micro-Marketing Strategies and Competition

The goal of this paper is to open the debate about the effect of customer specific retail marketing on competition. Segmentation and targeting based on loyalty card information affects horizontal and vertical relationships. Few retailers can take advantage of the power connected to the ownership of customer information. Consumers benefit from a more targeted approach to value creation but the distribution of such value varies widely, as a consequence of micro-targeting. A second goal is to test a new way of conducting joint research with practitioners. An online community was set up for the discussion of micro-marketing related issues. Online, the authors have been able to test the hypothesis and deliver the survey questionnaire to participating retailers who, in turn, can access results through the community website: www.partnership4loyalty.com.