Shoppers Drug Mart’s Optimum Points

The first company we shall be taking a look into is Shoppers Drug Mart, and their loyalty programs is commonly known as Optimum Points. It is a system that gives you 15 points for every dollar spent, and after you hit a certain amount of points, you can redeem those points for cash discounts on your purchases. The higher amount of point you have, the bigger the rewards. They also have events were if you spend a certain amount of money in the store in non-pharmaceutical products the points you receive increase. One of these events is the x20 for purchases over $75, so instead of earning the regular 1,125 points you would receive for that purchase, those get multiplied by 20, equalling to 22,500 points instead. Now, that would seem like large amount of point, however, to hit the first threshold of redeemable points you need 10,000 point for a $10 reward. The rewards go up by collecting more points, but the amount of money you have to spend even during these events is quite high. For the regular customer who only shows up occasionally they may very well not hit the higher amount of reward for a very long time, and those who do commit to the point system shall be spending large amounts of money continuously to collect the higher rewards. Recently they have added other partners where you can also earn optimum point, such as some gas stations, but the points gained per dollar are even lower than those earned at Shoppers Drug Mart.

It is on every customer to decide if spending money at these places is worth the rewards, perhaps they are if they are diligent on the earn more events, and only shop when they happen. Are there benefits to doing so? Or is it better to shop somewhere where the sales are better?