To the 1940s’ shopkeeper, who had a personal relationship with most of his or her regular customers and was able to greet them on arrival and know their favourite products, the concept of needing a bridge to enable the identification and track the needs and likes of a customer would be utterly alien. To today’s retail manager in any function at head office, who has no such direct face-to-face relationship with customers themselves, loyalty schemes seem an essential. How else would you be able to gather information on customers and market to them?