Portuguese retailer Continente has rolled out personalised offers for all Continente card app customers, which it claims is a first among large-scale grocery retailers in the world.
The supermarket chain has introduced personalised digital leaflets to more than one million customers via the Continente card app.
All the leaflets are different and personalised, featuring a selection of products tailored to the consumption patterns of individual customers.
The marketing director of its parent company, Sonae MC, Tiago Simões, told Dinheiro Vivo that the project was developed from scratch by Continente. “It is therefore a world innovation. We are not aware of another retailer in the planet with this product," he added.
Simões explained that "this level of customisation is only possible by processing a large volume of big data, captured through the use of the Continente customer loyalty card, as well as the application of Artificial Intelligence methodologies."
Data Collection
In a first stage, data is collected from customer purchases for product level information and the relationship between the customer and the product. Then the affinity of the customer towards a given offer/promotion is calculated.
To do this, machine learning techniques are applied to detect patterns in large data volumes. Next, the best set of offers is selected for each customer, taking into account factors such as the seasonality of consumption of some products, substitute or equivalent products and the minimum diversity of offers.
The process is constantly updated, as new data is collected every week.
According to Simões, each leaflet is created in a personalised way, offering products that the customer normally buys, and which are on sale that week. Customers just need to add the products in the leaflet to their online shopping cart.
Continente aims to extend its loyalty card to all customers by the end of 2021.
However, despite the digital innovation the retailer is not still planning to do away with traditional paper flyers.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest Retail news. Article by Branislav Pekic. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
