2016 commended: Wyevale Garden Centres, Relationships - case study

2016 commended: Wyevale, Relationships

The gardening retail sector is becoming ever more competitive: DIY chains are expanding their range of gardening products, aiming at younger, budget conscious gardeners. Meanwhile, supermarkets have been diversifying – stocking gardening products to boost average spend and improve margins. With the share of garden products retailed by actual garden centres dropping down to 32%, they face a huge challenge.

The private equity company who own Wyevale Garden Centres had a strategy to put the power back in their hands: combining an aggressive acquisition approach with the creation of a new national brand to unite various garden centre businesses and combat the competition.

They knew that for this rapid acquisition approach to succeed it was essential to build relationships with the marketplace. They needed to drive preference with the customer groups that had shopped at these centres prior to their absorption into the WGC family, and they needed to attract and win back those who were shopping elsewhere.

The Wyevale Garden Centres (WGC) loyalty scheme was not being fully utilised to unlock value or insight – having previously been treated as an utterly functional discount programme. There was low awareness of the benefits, no anticipation and no engagement – all of which was of course exacerbated by the fact that a number of previously-existing individual schemes had now been absorbed into one.

Their plan was to use the loyalty scheme as a strategic platform: to carry out extensive research to understand their audience and re-launch the scheme, bringing it in line with the new Wyevale Garden Centres brand and connect with the marketplace. The aim of this would be to increase average spend, repeat purchases and loyalty – with a target ROI of 100%. This was to provide the framework for longer-term growth: increasing customer satisfaction and the volume of high frequency shoppers.


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(Please note: parts of this case study may have been redacted for confidentiality purposes.)


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