CHICAGO & CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & SPRINGFIELD, Mass. & BOSTON — Big Y Foods, Inc. (www.bigy.com), Incentive Targeting (www.incentivetargeting.com), and HaloEffect (www.haloeffect.com) today announced that they have teamed with Groupon (www.groupon.com), to bring social buying to the grocery retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry. The partnership combines Groupon’s powerful social buying platform with Incentive Targeting’s retail shopper marketing technology, Big Y’s groundbreaking grocery retail loyalty program, and HaloEffect’s agency creative and grocery marketing expertise. Big Y will be the first grocery retailer to offer Groupon deals digitally loaded to shoppers’ loyalty cards.
“We anticipate that we will attract new customer interest as we explore new avenues in interactive customer marketing.”
.Big Y’s first Groupon offer, distributed among Springfield, MA subscribers on June 7, was for a newly introduced Shellfish Grill Pack, including lobster tails, mussels, clams, and other seafood suitable for grilling, which retails at $39.99 and is being offered at a 40% discount for $24.
For this test, a shopper purchases the Groupon, enters their Big Y Express Saving Club membership number and the Shellfish Grill Pack deal is electronically loaded to the shopper’s loyalty card. When the shopper purchases the promoted products at a Big Y supermarket, the deal is automatically credited at check out. With this event, Big Y becomes the first multi-store grocery retailer to run a Groupon deal, and the only retailer of any kind to fully integrate Groupon offers to their loyalty card system.
“As pioneers in loyalty cards for retail, we are excited to partner with Groupon and Incentive Targeting to test social buying with our shoppers,” said Michael D’Amour, Vice President of Sales and Merchandising for Big Y Foods, a 61 store grocery chain headquartered in Springfield, MA. “We anticipate that we will attract new customer interest as we explore new avenues in interactive customer marketing.”
“Consumers in the US spend over $550 billion a year on groceries,” explained Tom Schneider, President of HaloEffect, a marketing firm based in Boston, MA, “and CPG companies devote $35 billion annually to marketing and promotion. We see this partnership having the potential to revolutionize the grocery marketing landscape.”
"The grocery retail industry is a fantastic opportunity for us that has been largely untapped,” said Darren Schwartz, SVP of Sales of Groupon. “We look forward to working with Incentive Targeting and HaloEffect to introduce the Groupon model to new partners across the grocery industry and pass on unbeatable deals to our subscribers.”
“We are thrilled to be working with Big Y, HaloEffect, and Groupon, which has cracked the code of how to engage consumers on a broad scale with exciting offers,” said Win Burke, President and CEO of Incentive Targeting. “Using the combined Groupon and Incentive Targeting system, CPGs and grocery retail chains can not only deliver great offers to their shoppers, but also through our patent-pending shopper marketing platform they can measure the effectiveness of the program in real time, including how many new shoppers have been engaged, and follow up with these highly desirable shoppers with attractive targeted programs.”
About Groupon
Groupon, launched in November 2008 in Chicago, features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, eat, see and buy in more than 500 markets around the world. Groupon uses collective buying power to offer unbeatable prices and provide a win-win for businesses and consumers, delivering more than 900 daily deals globally. For more information, visit www.groupon.com.
About Incentive Targeting
Incentive Targeting, located in Cambridge, MA, helps retailers and brands understand and change shopper behavior. The company provides a self-service Web-based application to create, manage, and measure behaviorally-targeted promotions across a growing network of retailers. Using its industry-leading analytics and software, brands and chains can collaborate around shopper insights, and marketing managers can target shoppers and create promotions in minutes instead of weeks or months. For more information, visit www.incentivetargeting.com.
About Big Y
Headquartered in Springfield, MA, Big Y is one of the largest independently owned supermarket chains in New England. Proud to be family owned and operated, they currently operate 61 stores throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts with over 10,000 employees. Founded in 1936 by brothers Paul and Gerald D’Amour, the store was named after an intersection in Chicopee, Massachusetts where two roads converge to form a “Y”.
About HaloEffect
HaloEffect is a full-service marketing firm based in Boston, Massachusetts that specializes in creating game changing marketing ideas that extend beyond the core objectives of an assignment to achieve a halo effect that revitalizes existing markets and opens entirely new ones — such as the $550 billion grocery/CPG space. Since 2009, HaloEffect has worked as a consultant for Groupon delivering highly profitable local deals.
Source: Groupon / Big Y