Grocery loyalty programs are widely used, but shoppers do not value every feature equally. Recent surveys and pricing analysis show high membership in the UK, strong interest in discounts and grocery rewards, growing use of apps and digital coupons in the United States, and continuing concerns about fairness and personal data.
Contents
- Membership and market reach
- Loyalty prices and value comparisons
- Rewards and benefits shoppers prioritize
- Apps, coupons, and mobile usage
- Engagement, retention, and shopping behavior
- Trust, fairness, and data sharing
Membership and market reach
The strongest grocery loyalty program usage figures come from the United Kingdom. In 2024, 97% of UK grocery shoppers surveyed belonged to at least one supermarket loyalty scheme, according to the Competition and Markets Authority’s Executive summary. Members held an average of three supermarket loyalty-scheme memberships, and 21% belonged to five or more schemes.
Membership was concentrated among major retailers. Among UK regular grocery shoppers surveyed in 2024, 77% said they were signed up to Tesco Clubcard and 57% said they were signed up to Sainsbury’s Nectar Card. These are survey measures of reported sign-up, not estimates of active use at every shopping trip.
The YouGov report “What Britons want out of loyalty programmes in 2024” found that 82% of GB adults surveyed were currently signed up for a supermarket loyalty programme in May 2024. The different UK figures reflect different survey populations and research designs, so they should not be treated as a single national total.
Canadian shoppers also showed broad reach. The 2024 Grocery IQ Study reported awareness and enrolment among 69% of Canadian grocery shoppers surveyed in 2024, up from 67% in 2023. Satisfaction was high among enrolled shoppers: 93% expressed at least some satisfaction with their loyalty program in 2024.
| Market and measure | Result | Period |
|---|---|---|
| UK shoppers in at least one scheme | 97% | 2024 |
| GB adults signed up for a supermarket program | 82% | May 2024 |
| Canadian shoppers aware and enrolled | 69% | 2024 |
| UK shoppers with five or more memberships | 21% | 2024 |
Loyalty prices and value comparisons
Loyalty pricing has become a substantial part of grocery purchasing in the UK. Supermarkets generated more than £5 billion in revenue from loyalty-priced grocery products between November 2023 and January 2024. Loyalty-priced products represented approximately 22% of total grocery revenue for the five supermarkets examined by the CMA during that period.
For members, average savings on loyalty-priced products ranged from 17% to 25% across the five supermarkets examined in 2024. The range describes the average member saving in that analysis; it does not mean every product or every basket produced the same result.
The CMA also examined roughly 50,000 UK loyalty dual-price products in a 2023–2024 pricing analysis. For 92% of those products, the non-member price was no higher than the retailer’s price in the preceding 28 days. Only 0.6% showed a potentially inflated non-member price pattern. These figures describe the analyzed promotions and should not be generalized to every grocery promotion outside the sample.
Cross-retailer comparisons show why shoppers may still compare prices. Of 429 branded UK products with loyalty prices, 61 were available at a lower price at another supermarket during the CMA comparison. Also, 343 of the 429 products, or 80%, were on promotion at least one other retailer. The average UK loyalty dual-price promotion lasted between 17 and 26 days across the five supermarkets examined.
For meal planning, these findings make the timing and scope of a promotion important. A loyalty price may reduce the cost of a planned item, while another retailer may offer a competing promotion. The supplied CMA figures measure prices and promotions, not the total cost of a complete meal plan.
Rewards and benefits shoppers prioritize
Discounts were the most broadly appealing benefit in the May 2024 YouGov survey: 85% of GB adults surveyed rated them appealing. Monetary rewards such as vouchers followed at 82%, while 67% found freebies appealing. The practical mechanics of a program also mattered. Ease of reward redemption was prioritized by 87% of respondents, and 80% prioritized the ability to earn points quickly.
Rewards can influence which brand shoppers consider. In the same GB survey, 83% said special pricing was likely to affect brand consideration, while 82% said monetary rewards were likely to affect it. These measures capture stated influence on consideration, not completed purchases or changes in household spending.
Canadian shoppers placed particular value on rewards that can be used for groceries. In 2024, 68% of Canadian grocery shoppers surveyed rated reward points redeemable for groceries as the most valuable store-loyalty feature. Exclusive loyalty-member discounts were valued by 46%, up from 40% in 2023. Cash back on purchases was identified as the most valuable feature by 36% of Canadian shoppers overall and by 55% of Quebec shoppers surveyed.
| Benefit or feature | Share selecting or prioritizing it | Market and period |
|---|---|---|
| Discounts appealing | 85% | GB adults, May 2024 |
| Monetary rewards appealing | 82% | GB adults, May 2024 |
| Easy reward redemption prioritized | 87% | GB adults, May 2024 |
| Grocery-redeemable points most valuable | 68% | Canada, 2024 |
| Cash back most valuable | 36% | Canada, 2024 |
| Cash back most valuable | 55% | Quebec, 2024 |
Apps, coupons, and mobile usage
Retailer apps are used for several different loyalty-related tasks by US grocery shoppers. The SPAR 2024 Shopper Insights Survey found that 50% of US grocery shoppers surveyed used retail apps to get the best prices in May 2024. Another 46% used retailer apps to access loyalty rewards, 34% used them to obtain tailored coupons, and 26% used them to check sales and promotions.
The same SPAR survey reported that 42% of US grocery shoppers considered mobile apps helpful shopping aids in 2024. Mobile shopping behavior extended beyond loyalty accounts: 40% of US shoppers surveyed used a mobile device every time or most of the time while shopping in-store.
Digital coupons were more common than physical coupons in the FMI 2024 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends Series. In 2024, 50% of US grocery shoppers surveyed used digital coupons, compared with 37% who used physical coupons. Price comparison also played a significant role: 37% used mobile phones to compare prices across stores.
FMI reported that US mobile price-comparison use among grocery shoppers was 28 percentage points higher in 2024 than in 2016. The figure is a change over time in the reported behavior, not a forecast of future app adoption.
Engagement, retention, and shopping behavior
Membership does not automatically mean long-term engagement. The CMA reported that 27% of UK grocery shoppers surveyed had joined a supermarket loyalty scheme during the 12 months before its 2024 survey. Among those recent joiners, 27% cited access to loyalty prices as a primary motivation.
New-joiner shares varied by retailer. Thirty percent of UK Lidl loyalty-scheme members in the CMA survey were new joiners during the previous 12 months, compared with 27% of Asda loyalty-scheme members. These figures show the share of each retailer’s surveyed members who were recent joiners, rather than the number of new members added.
Reported use compared with the prior year also varied across schemes. Twenty-seven percent of UK shoppers reported using their Asda loyalty scheme more than a year earlier in the CMA survey. The corresponding figure was 21% for Tesco or Lidl, 19% for Morrisons, 18% for Sainsbury’s, 14% for Co-op, and 10% for Waitrose.
The pattern suggests that grocery loyalty usage includes several stages: joining, noticing a price or reward, redeeming a benefit, and returning to the scheme. The available figures measure these stages separately. They do not establish that one retailer’s program caused higher shopping frequency or larger baskets.
Trust, fairness, and data sharing
Perceptions of value and fairness coexist in the UK data. Sixty-nine percent of UK grocery shoppers surveyed in 2024 thought loyalty pricing offered good savings for members. At the same time, 43% considered it unfair that members paid lower prices than non-members for some products. Forty percent did not trust that loyalty prices represented a genuine saving on the usual price, and 55% thought non-member prices during loyalty promotions were generally higher than the usual selling price.
Younger shoppers were particularly likely to perceive inflation. Among UK shoppers aged 18–29 surveyed in 2024, 71% thought non-member prices during loyalty promotions had been inflated. This is an age-group result, not a measure of proven price inflation.
Awareness of data collection was high. Seventy-two percent of UK grocery shoppers surveyed recalled being aware that supermarkets collect personal data each time they shop through a loyalty scheme. Comfort depended on how the data would be used: 61% felt comfortable with personalized offers from the supermarket, 32% with anonymized data shared with other companies to understand shopping habits, and 17% with individual loyalty data shared so other companies could send personalized promotions.
Personal-data concerns were not the main barrier for most non-members in the CMA survey. Only 7% of UK shoppers who were not members of any scheme at a supermarket where they regularly shopped cited those concerns as the reason. In the May 2024 YouGov survey, 66% of GB adults said sign-up or subscription fees discouraged them from joining or continuing to use a loyalty program.
For shoppers building a meal plan, the useful comparison is therefore broader than the headline discount. A program’s value can depend on whether the reward is easy to redeem, whether the price applies to planned products, whether competing promotions exist, and whether the shopper accepts the program’s data practices and any fees.