GB2344678A

GB2344678A - Loyalty card system

Info

Publication number: GB2344678A
Application number: GB9926500A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Barrie Leslie Brinkman
Original assignee: HTEC Ltd
Current assignee: HTEC Ltd
Priority date: 1998-11-10
Filing date: 1999-11-10
Publication date: 2000-06-14
Anticipated expiration: 2019-11-10
Also published as: GB9824576D0; GB2344678B; GB9926500D0

Abstract

An electronic loyalty card system comprises a plurality of local card interfacing terminals situated at a plurality of local sites at which a loyalty card can be used to pay for goods or services, each local terminal comprising or being closely associated with a respective local database adapted to store total points accumulated by a predetermined number of cards, the local databases being in communication with a main database which stores total points accumulated for each of the loyalty cards, and the total points for particular loyalty cards are stored in those local databases for the terminals at which those particular loyalty cards are used most often. The system can be applied to any retail loyalty application e.g. petrol stations and supermarkets and ensures a high probability of a customer having available to him or her the total points accumulated for that customer's loyalty card.

Description

LOYALTY CARD SYSTEMS This invention relates to loyalty card systems.

Loyalty systems are now well-established using electronic points, which avoid the unattractive problems of paper stamps and vouchers. In an electronic loyalty system the customer has a card or token (for example magnetic stripe card, smart card, bar code) or other portable readable device, hereinafter referred to for convenience as a loyalty card. The loyalty card is used to collect points issued by a retailer for purchases made at that retailer's sites.

There are to date a number of different known approaches to the management and recording of points for such loyalty systems, these are: a) Electronic Purse. In this system the points earned by the customer are written to the customer's card (loyalty card). Typically the accumulated points are encrypted and written to the loyalty card. When the card is next used, the data is read off the card, decrypted and the card total points can be displayed to the customer or printed on his till receipt. The points for the latest transaction are calculated and added to the card total points which are encrypted and rewritten to the loyalty card. This approach is a powerful customer motivator since the customer is always given his total points whenever a new transaction is undertaken. This helps to motivate repeat business as he sees his points accumulate to achieve some redemption value. By having the points on the loyalty card a range of immediate redemption options are possible.

The problems with this type of system are the costs of cards, if smart cards are used, or the cost of the read/write terminals if magnetic stripe cards are used. This solution has generally been used in petrol service station applications where a customer may visit many different sites. b) Off-line Central Database. In this system the loyalty card is simply used to identify the customer and therefore the card details are simply read from the loyalty card and collected with points earned by the customer. This transaction log is collected typically overnight to a central database where the accumulated points for each loyalty card are held. (The term'central'does not of course refer to precise geometric position but rather to the database being a main database remote from the retail sites.) A regular mailing to each customer then informs them of the total points available for redemption. The problem with this solution is that unless very frequent mailings are provided, the motivation to collect more points is reduced. Typically the customer will only receive a mailing every three months. There is also the disadvantage of the ongoing costs of the regular mailings. c) Home Site Database. This is a variation of the Off-line Central Database, where the customer will have a'home'store, ie the store where he or she is registered for his loyalty card. In this case having collected all the transaction data centrally, the data for each loyalty card is transmitted typically overnight to a local database in the customer's home store. This ensures that whenever the customer visits their home store they can be given their latest card points total and, based on this, local redemption can take place. This has been used in some supermarket systems since customers usually regularly visit a single store and may only occasionally visit other stores in the retail group. Most of the time, therefore, they will receive their latest points total and only occasionally when visiting away sites will they not receive information on their total points. This approach has all the benefits of the central database solution with the advantage that at the home site instant total points are always available. This however would not be very attractive for a petrol station application where there may be no concept of a home site. d) On-line Central Database. In this system the central database is accessed on-line every time a transaction with a loyalty card takes place to obtain the card total points. This therefore guarantees that the card total points and redemptions ran be undertaken at any site. This has the advantages of the off-line central database with the advantages of the electronic purse concept. The problem with this solution is the cost of providing on-line access to a central database on every transaction.

According to the present invention we provide an electronic loyalty card system comprising a plurality of local card-interfacing terminals situated in use at a plurality of local sites at which a loyalty card (as hereinbefore defined) can be used to pay for goods or services, each local terminal comprising or being closely associated with a respective local database adapted to store total points accumulated by a predetermined number of cards, which is substantially less than the total number of issued cards, a main database located remotely from the terminals, and having a capacity to store, or have access to, substantially all of the points of the issued cards, communication links permitting communication, at least on occasion, between the main database and said local databases, control means controlling the transfer of data between the main database and the local databases and vice versa by way of said communication links, the arrangement being such that total points allotted to customers through the use of the loyalty card by the customers are generally stored in the main database, and total points are communicated from the main database to designated local databases for selections of customers, the selections being made for each local database upon the history of the customers'use of the corresponding local terminal such that the more often a particular customer uses a local terminal, as compared with the use made of that terminal by other customers, the greater is the chance that that particular customer's total points are stored in the corresponding local database, the local terminals being capable of indicating to the customer the customer's total points as stored in the corresponding local database.

Thus we propose a new concept that can be applied to any retail loyalty application including petrol service stations, supermarkets and a wide range of other applications. It may be termed a Distributed Database Loyalty System. Thus the basic concept of this approach is to implement a central database but then transfer back to each site a selection of loyalty card total points to form a local database at each site. This selection will be made to maximise the probability that when a loyalty card is used at the site, its total points will be found in its local database so that it can be displayed to the customer or printed on his till receipt.

This concept will allow a single loyalty card total points to be included in a number of the local databases, thus ensuring a high probability of it being available when the card is used.

Preferably the allocation of each card to several local databases is made dynamically thereby making it possible to change the identity of the local databases in which the card total points are held when the customer changes his purchasing habits or moves home etc.

Preferably the system is operative to compare local database entries with main database entries so that local database entries may be updated.

Preferably local database size is greater than X/Y, where ; X = number of loyalty cards in the system Y = number of sites in the system Preferably if a new loyalty card transaction occurs at a terminal which does not comprise an entry for that loyalty card in the respective local database and the respective local database is full, an entry in the local database corresponding to a loyalty card which has not been used at that terminal for the longest period is deleted so as to allow for the new entry corresponding to the new loyalty card transaction.

By way of example only, we shall now describe a loyalty card system in accordance with the invention. Each local site will have a local database that can hold a fixed number of Loyalty cards information (typically loyalty card serial number and latest card total points). The master database host on receiving each transaction log from a site will update the master database (this could be done in parallel to polling other terminals).

The host will then compare its copies of all the local databases with the master database and a list of updates to send to the local terminals. The next time that the terminal polls into the host, the terminal's copy of the local database will be validated by checking the CRC, if it is OK then the host will send the updates to the local database and the updated database will be validated by checking the new CRC. If the database is invalid then the host will send the whole of the local database. If a loyalty card transaction is received from a site that does not have that loyalty card in its local database, then it is immediately added to that sites local database. If the local database is full, then an entry is deleted to add the new entry to the local database. The entry to be deleted will be that loyalty card entry that has not received a transaction at that site for the longest period. This will be deleted and the new entry will be added to that local database.

The issuing terminal will not update its local database with transaction information, but will use the transaction log in conjunction with the local database to generate the customer's current points. This means that the host has an exact copy of the terminals'local databases so that the host can confidently send to the terminals just updates to the database instead of the whole database, thus saving polling time. These updates can contain the new points instead of the number of points to add or remove.

It also removes any host/terminal synchronisation problem caused by the terminals removing records from the local database in order to make space for new records.

The local database would also have a checksum or CRC so that the local database can be quickly validated by the host or the loyalty terminal. If the checksum or CRC fails then the whole database would need to be reloaded from the host, but this would not prevent an issuing terminal from continuing to issue points, it would only be unable to report the total points to the customer.

By defining the size N of the local database, it is possible to enhance the probability that when a card is used locally it will be found in the local database already. In a typical loyalty system which has X Loyalty cards in use and Y sites where points are issued then the'notional'local customers per site is X/Y. By setting the local database size to 2X/Y, 3X/Y, 4X/Y, 5X/Y higher levels of local database hit rate can be achieved. From reviewing typical applications setting the size to 3X/Y will give a high level of success at having a cards total points in the local database, when used at a site.

Each night when transactions are collected from each site the local database updates are created and then downloaded to each site. To minimise connection time to each site it is only necessary to send changes to records in the local database. This could be one of the following options: a) update the total points of a Loyalty card already in the local database, b) remove an entry from the local database, c) add an entry to the local database.

If the terminal polls once per night then the host will collect the transactions from the terminal for the previous day and send to the terminal the updates as a result of transactions from the day before that.

If the terminal polls twice per night the host will collect the transactions from the previous day on the first poll and send the database updates resulting from these transactions on the second poll. Thus if the terminals poll twice per night the local database will contain the total points from the end of the previous day, ie up to 24 hours old, but if the terminals only poll once per night then the local database will contain the total points from the end of the day before the previous, ie up to 48 hours old.

This same technique can be used for a redemption system, ie the redemption system uses its transaction log to determine if any points have already been redeemed that day, thus reducing the number of points available from the total in the local database.

Claims

CLAIMS 1. An electronic loyalty card system comprising a plurality of local card-interfacing terminals situated in use at a plurality of local sites at which a loyalty card (as hereinbefore defined) can be used to pay for goods or services, each local terminal comprising or being closely associated with a respective local database adapted to store total points accumulated by a predetermined number of cards, which is substantially less than the total number of issued cards, a main database located remotely from the terminals, and having a capacity to store, or have access to, substantially all of the points of the issued cards, communication links permitting communication, at least on occasion, between the main database and said local databases, control means controlling the transfer of data between the main database and the local databases and vice versa by way of said communication links, the arrangement being such that total points allotted to customers through the use of the loyalty card by the customers are generally stored in the main database, and total points are communicated from the main database to designated local databases for selections of customers, the selections being made for each local database upon the history of the customers'use of the corresponding local terminal such that the more often a particular customer uses a local terminal, as compared with the use made of that terminal by other customers, the greater is the chance that that particular customer's total points are stored in the corresponding local database, the local terminals being capable of indicating to the customer the customer's total points as stored in the corresponding local database.
2. An electronic loyalty card system as claimed in claim 1 in which the system is operative to compare local database entries with main database entries so that local database entries may be updated.
3. An electronic loyalty card system as claimed in claim 1 or claim 2 in which the local database size is greater then X/Y ; where; X = number of loyalty cards in the system Y = number of sites in the system
4. An electronic loyalty card system as claimed in any preceding claim in which if a new loyalty card transaction occurs at a terminal which does not comprise an entry for that loyalty card in the respective local database and the respective local database is full, an entry in the local database corresponding to a loyalty card which has not been used at that terminal for the longest period is deleted so as to allow for a new entry corresponding to the new loyalty card transaction.
5. An electronic loyalty card system substantially as hereinbefore described.