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Asda hasn't just missed the boat by not having a loyalty card, it seems to have missed the whole point of loyalty schemes. Andy Bond says you can't "buy loyalty with plastic points". But it's not the points that are important - it's the understanding of individual customer behaviour to enable the retailer to personalise its proposition that really matters.

Customers are loyal to brands that consistently deliver the most value back for their custom. What seems clear from the success of Clubcard and Nectar is that customers value personal, targeted rewards far more than generic value messages.

Both Tesco and Sainsbury's (via Nectar) are masters of using loyalty data to communicate more effectively with individual shoppers and create more engaging reward propositions.

Loyalty won't come from making an individual offer to the masses. It's the ability to deliver a mass of targeted offers to the individual where the real value in loyalty schemes lies.

Andrew Mitchell, head of loyalty solutions, Arvato Loyalty Services