Collectable Loyalty Programmes: An Investigation into the use of Embedded Messages to invite a Culture of Collecting in the South African Grocery Retailer SPAR’s Angry Birds Programme

Abstract

Customer loyalty has been established as a crucial component to fostering sustainable sales for grocery retailers. Traditional point accrual loyalty card formats have become outdated and a new wave of collectable loyalty programmes is emerging. Despite the evident popularity of collectable programmes, presently available theories have failed to identify the embedded messages within these programmes which invite a culture of collecting in South African consumers, leaving this phenomenon widely unexplained. This study seeks to unearth the elements of text and colourutilised by SPAR  in its Angry Birds collectable programmes. This study employed the use of qualitative and interpretivistic research in the form of multimodal discourse analysis, in order to examine each collectable object as a material culture text according to the investigative modal framework of colour and text which was found to increase personification of the collectable items and increase consumers’ desire to complete a set. This research therefore explores the unchartered world of collectable programmes within the South African grocery retail industry and contributes to insights into the collecting habits of South African consumers and the messages that invite such a culture of collecting.