Green Shield Stamps: Difference between revisions

Green Shield Stamps were a sales promotion or incentive scheme designed to encourage or reward shopping, by being able to buy "free" gifts.

An American innovation, they were founded in the UK by Richard Tompkins, and were very popular during the Sixties and Seventies. Other schemes included Pink Stamps (used as Sperry & Hutchinson could not use green), the Co-op, Blue Chip and the short-lived UK operation of King Korn.

Distributed by Tompkins company Sperry & Hutchinson, the stamps were given away at filling stations, corner shops and supermarkets, with shoppers presented with stamps based on the size of their purchase. Collect enough of them and be able to face licking them to stick them into collectors books (a past time often given to amuse children), and the shopper could claim valuable prizes from your local Green Shield shop or catalogue.

Tesco founder Jack Cohen was an enthusiastic advocate of trading stamps as an inducement for shoppers to patronise his stores; he signed up in 1963, and became one of the company’s largest clients. But Cohen was a fan of pile it high and sell it cheap, and in the mid-70's Tesco faced many cost problems associated with not properly intergrating it's purchased chains of stores. In 1977 Tesco launched Operation Checkout, an across the board price cutting campaign aimed at countering the threat from the new breed of discounters such as Kwik Save. A key decision was to abandon Green Shield stamps, thus saving some £20m a year and helping to finance price reductions ^[1]

In light of a price war at the checkout, and higher prices where the stamps were sold, consumers quickly realised that although the stamps were accumulating, grocery prices were having to rise to cover the costs of the scheme - and as inflation was quite high, the value of the stamps was going downwards.

As sales began to slow and other retailers abandoned the scheme, the original Green Sheild Stamp 'catalogue' shops were rebranded Argos begining in July 1973. For seven years it traded independently (though heavily linked to the Green Shield stamps operation) before being sold to BAT Industries.

Green Shield Stamp "syndrome"

Green Shield Stamps were successful as a business, not because they encouraged people to buy goods in proportion to the sales value - they made money because so many receivers of Green Shield Stamps never cashed them in. Sticking the stamps in was painful and time consuming. This became known as Green Shield Stamp syndrome

References

External links

• Nostaligia Central
• Loyalty Management UK homepage
• 1975 debate in the Irish Parliament re monopolistic practices
• Scotsman article on the "House of Cards"
• Genesis - "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" features Green Shield Stamps in the background video!