Tesco offers car discounts to cardholders
Tesco Clubcard customers can use up to £2,000 of their Tesco Clubcard vouchers towards the purchase of a new car. 
The retailer has formed an exclusive arrangement with car retailer Inchcape, enabling tokens to be used as part payment for a Ford, Toyota or Volkswagen model through Inchcape, the UK’s second largest franchise dealer with 126 Retail Centres.
Steve Archer, director of innovation and strategy for Inchcape UK, said: “The specific discounts vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and from model to model but at launch of the partnership they are up to £2,000 worth of tokens off the price of a Ford and £1,000 worth of tokens off the price of a Toyota or a Volkswagen.
“For any Clubcard holder in the market for a new car it makes absolute financial sense to use the vouchers as part-payment towards a new car.”
Tesco Clubcard holders are able to exchange every £10 in Clubcard vouchers for £20 worth of rewards tokens, which they can then use to buy a wide cross-section of goods and services through the supermarket’s partners.
The exact makes and models available through the exclusive Tesco-Inchcape partnership will vary, but at the launch of the partnership available cars include: the Ford Ka, Ford Fiesta, Ford Focus and Ford Mondeo; Toyota Aygo and Toyota Yaris; Volkswagen Polo, Volkswagen Golf and Volkswagen Golf Plus.
Archer added that models available under the Clubcard scheme will change regularly and in the future we will look to expand the programme to include more models and more manufacturers. He said: “With fifteen million Clubcard holders we are hoping to sell thousands of new cars in the coming months.”
Loyalty Magazine Comment
Tesco Clubcard holders are able to exchange every £10 in Clubcard vouchers for £20 worth of rewards tokens, which they can then use to buy a wide cross-section of goods and services through the supermarket’s partners. This makes partner offers very good sense for the reward saver. But there is a problem with the current mode of presentation, which is by paper voucher if the rewards on offer are increasingly going to call for long term collection.
Saving £2,000 of paper rewards tokens is unwieldy and difficult. Tesco maintains that people enjoy saving the vouchers which are touchy/feely, rather than virtual electronic saving onto a card. So is Tesco likely to change its mind if it is to embark on more big ticket reward items such as their car discount?
To change the entire principles of the Tesco programme, which relies heavily on the customer mailing, the enticing money off vouchers, and the actual reward tokens would be a major change to the scheme.
Half-way house solution
Loyalty Magazine thinks it has the answer. Would a half way house solution be to offer customers the equivalent of a prepaid card, which could be loaded with vouchers for those customers who wished to organize their saving? The technology exists to enable Tesco to keep track of customers’ prepaid voucher accounts, so in the event of anyone losing their card, the balance could be reimbursed.