Boots revamps Advantage Card kiosks

The health and beauty retailer is to replace Advantage Card kiosks in 485 of its high-street stores. Installed in 1999, the kiosks provide cardholders with personalised offers based on their shopping habits.

Boots said the replacement kiosks will take up less space and will be faster and easier to navigate; updated technology will also enable offers to be more targeted.

It has appointed integrated agency Odd to create a point-of-sale area and brand identity for the kiosks.

The kiosks will be rolled out in bigger Boots stores between May and June. Units are unlikely to be fitted in smaller outlets the company inherited through its merger with Alliance Unichem.

The activity comes as Boots places more emphasis on its Advantage Card loyalty scheme, which has about 15m members.

The retailer is seeking an agency to help it make more effective use of the data collated from the cards and is believed to have already brought in loyalty specialists from Tesco.

In addition to using the Advantage Card to build customer loyalty, Boots wants to gain a better understanding of consumer shopping habits in each store. One of the strengths of Tesco's Clubcard is the highly detailed information it can provide from transactions.

The review of the data brief will not affect the position of Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voelkel, which handles direct marketing for Boots' Advantage Card.

Separately, Boots is developing in-store health zones in its bigger stores, making better use of floor space by dropping underperforming sectors such as electricals and homewares.

The plans include the extension of the waiting areas for customers collecting prescriptions. Consultation rooms for pharmacists are also being introduced as part of a government initiative to alleviate the pressure on GPs' surgeries from people suffering from long-term illnesses.

This article was first published on Marketing