No, it’s not something from a high brow University, nor from some course that I have attended, nor is it an award given to me by a loving community.

No, it’s much better than that. Apparently I saved £5.16 by shopping at Sainsbury’s rather than their competitors. See, I am really clever!

The certificate is in the form of a piece of paper printed out from the till which verifies in nice, big writing exactly just how clever I am. I can carry it around and show it off to my friends.

The concept of a post purchase reassurance of your wise choice to visit a particular retailer is a clever one. I can even see a gamification thing going on here, where people scan their certificates to show who actually saved the most money by shopping at Sainsbury’s.

This new technique of winning loyalty in austerity Britain sits alongside of loyalty points and a raft of other measures designed to make me want to shop in a certain place.

In pre-austerity Britain, most of the deal was about grabbing retail footage, opening stores every half a mile just in case someone decides they want to buy something they didn’t want half a mile ago, or in an attempt to appeal to an increasingly lazy catchment that won’t walk too far.

Once all the available retail space had been filled and the world ran out of money, retailers have had to turn to a new trick. A trick so cunning that it should possibly be banned.

The trick, telling your customers how clever they are!

And flattery gets you everywhere.

At times like this, when things really are tight, it’s useful to give your customer a healthy reminder of exactly how clever they are.

The concept of post purchase dissonance may be unfamiliar to you as an academic principle but it is that feeling that you get in your gut after you make a purchase when you think, did I do the right thing? Maybe I will lose my job? Maybe I could have negotiated harder? Maybe …. A billion reasons why you are stupid for making this decision.

So this idea is that you are given a certificate reminding you of just how smart you have been. It could work out in all sorts of spaces, telecoms, utilities, airline travel. After all we are all familiar with the “Thank you for flying with us today” message, but how about being handed a certificate that reminds you just what a smart choice you made by flying with a particular carrier and how much money you saved.

It would certainly make a dramatic difference from the airline that didn’t give you a certificate because you would always be wondering, what if? What if I got ripped off? What if I could have saved? Next time I will shop a little harder.

Ink on paper and a slap on the back. The oldest marketing tools in the world. Reinvented by Sainsbury’s!

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.

Welcome back! Thanks for coming back to read this blog.

For all those of you who collect points and miles here and there, I think it is time to decide what makes you loyal.

In my case I believe, and I will always believe, that points or miles are simply a metaphor for a discount, often a discount you give to your frequent users. The challenge with them is the bigger the user, the less value the discount is. If I fly 1 million miles every year, how much of an incentive is a flight, regardless of destination? I probably would most likely enjoy sitting at home, for a change.

The greatest loyalty programme of all is actually two words – “Welcome back”. Maybe I should rephrase that. It’s “Welcome back, Mr Hughes” (in my case).

It’s as simple as that. For me, it’s more about the recognition of loyalty than it is about the reward. The reason why I say this is because it would seem that the recognition piece is the most difficult piece of all and also the bit that gets forgotten.

I say this after returning from my Saturday morning jaunt to get coffee. After months of training I have finally managed to break the coffee shop that I go to. They have gone from “What would you like?” to “Good morning, how are you?”

A subtle difference is behind this. Every day I order the same thing, every day I go to the same shop. “What would you like?” identifies that the person behind the counter did not pay attention yesterday, the day before or the day before. This to me is irritating. In the new, loyal reality of my coffee shop, “Good morning, how are you?” is silently followed by me handing over money, a bit of banter and then, “Your drink’s ready at the end”. And guess what? I didn’t have to even mention what it was I was going to drink. Recently the manager has noticed what car I drive and as she sees it pulling up outside, she starts my order, ready to take away.

I have a loyalty card from this and 100 other coffee shops. But the reason I go back to this particular one is because they know me and because they know that, in the morning, I want my large, white Americano, a smile and a sharp exit. The loyalty card is just a discount.

This morning, however, a new person was working. And this is where the loyalty thing falls down. The first thing she says was “what would you like to drink?”

True commitment to customer service does what I have seen done on great cruise lines and in great hotels. As the guest enters, they are caught on camera and the image is flashed around and learnt by key staff.

The net result is that as you walk around you are greeted by “Good morning, Mr Hughes.” Recognition. I can be faceless in almost every place I go in the world. But great loyalty from me is driven by recognition, and the simple words “Welcome back, Mr Hughes”, “Good Morning, Mr Hughes” and even better, in the most remarkable of cases, “Nice to see you again, Ian”. But that’s rare.

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.