Research published earlier this year by marketing technology company Savi found that 76% of Gen Z shoppers would switch supermarkets if a digital coupon was not accepted at the till. Three-quarters of a generation – the one most exposed to gamified loyalty mechanics, the one raised on progress bars and achievement badges, the one every retailer is building its app experience around would abandon their preferred store over a single coupon. At the same time, 97% of UK shoppers are members of at least one supermarket loyalty scheme, and 80% now split their grocery budgets across two or more supermarkets per month. The loyalty industry has never been larger. The shoppers have never been less loyal. Something is not adding up.
Everybody signs up, nobody stays
The scale of loyalty scheme membership in the UK is extraordinary. The average consumer carries no fewer than three loyalty cards, according to a 2024 Competition and Markets Authority analysis. Mintel’s 2026 UK Customer Loyalty in Retailing report found that 55% of consumers belong to at least four schemes, but 58% have only actively used three or fewer in the past six months. Tesco Clubcard alone reaches 83% of regular grocery shoppers. Nectar reaches 57%. Nearly every shopper in the country is enrolled in at least one programme, and most are enrolled in several.
But membership is not loyalty. It is optionality. A 2025 poll by Reward, cited in The Grocer’s analysis of supermarket loyalty schemes, found that 80% of consumers now split their grocery spend across at least two supermarkets per month, the highest proportion since 2023. The overall proportion of shoppers switching retailers has increased by 6% since 2019. Shoppers are not signing up for loyalty schemes because they are committed. They are signing up because having multiple cards gives them the freedom to shop wherever the best deal is on any given week. The Grocer’s own verdict was blunt: loyalty schemes might have the scale, but they are not creating enough of a differentiator to stop shoppers from straying elsewhere when the price is right.
Gamification drives engagement, not commitment
The engagement numbers look impressive. The Savi research, surveying 8,000 adults across the UK and Europe, found that 87% of consumers are more likely to play a game or enter a prize draw when guaranteed a special offer. Among shoppers aged 25 to 44, that figure rises to 90%. Seventy per cent of UK shoppers would try a new product or brand if offered a coupon, climbing to 85% among 25 to 34-year-olds. Gamification clearly drives interaction. People spin the wheel. People complete the challenge. People open the app.
But the same research that celebrated a 7X higher conversion rate from gamified coupon campaigns also found that 54% of all UK shoppers would switch supermarkets if a coupon was not accepted rising to 76% among Gen Z. The Barclays Consumer Spend report for 2025 put it plainly: the desire to reduce costs now “supersedes brand loyalty, with consumers perfectly happy to hunt around for the best deals and discounts.” Two-thirds of UK consumers say they are spending more on groceries than a year ago. Over a third feel worse off financially. In that environment, a spin wheel is not building a relationship. It is offering a transaction. And transactions, by definition, go to the highest bidder.
The mechanic borrowed from casinos keeps the player engaged, making the next reward feel within reach, which works brilliantly for engagement. But in retail, unlike in a casino, the player can walk across the street to a competitor running the same mechanic with a better payout. When every supermarket app has a spin wheel, the spin wheel stops being a differentiator and becomes table stakes.
Gen Z – gamification’s target audience and its biggest counterargument
Gen Z is the generation that should love gamification most. They grew up on it. Duolingo streaks, Snapchat rewards, and Starbucks stars gamified experiences have been part of their digital lives since childhood. Dentsu’s Consumer Navigator research for 2026 describes them as “commercially fluid,” actively re-evaluating where, why, and what earns their loyalty. Nearly half use cashback or loyalty apps. Forty-two per cent rely on price-comparison tools. Only 13% use no value-supporting tools at all. Sixty-one per cent say social media is better than traditional retail for discovering new products.
This is a generation that understands progress bars, achievement badges, and streak rewards intuitively. And they are the least loyal shoppers in the data. The 76% switching figure is not evidence that gamification has failed to reach Gen Z. It is evidence that Gen Z has learned to play the game better than the retailers running it. They sign up for every scheme, use every tool, compare every offer, and go wherever the value is highest on any given day. Gamification taught them how to optimise. It did not teach them to commit. Savi’s own chief commercial officer acknowledged the shift: “Shoppers are becoming more discerning about where they place their loyalty.”
The same comparison-led behaviour appears across other digital markets. Finding a casino’s sister sites, for example, allows users to identify brands that share an operator, platform or similar reward structure before deciding where the strongest value lies. Gen Z shoppers apply much the same logic to supermarkets: they look beyond the branding, compare connected offers and move between platforms without assuming that membership should mean exclusivity.
What loyalty actually requires
If gamification alone does not build loyalty, what does? The Grocer’s May 2026 analysis of successful programmes pointed toward a different mechanism entirely: personalisation. The retailers seeing the strongest retention were the ones using shopper data to craft offers matched to individual purchasing patterns rather than deploying surface-level game mechanics across their entire base. The key insight from the analysis was revealing: “When consumers see ‘your price’ rather than ‘regular price’ on items they actually want, they perceive a partnership rather than manipulation.”
Barclays found that 76% of UK consumers believe loyalty schemes should provide perks beyond discounts, suggesting that the value proposition needs to go deeper than points and prizes. Holland and Barrett’s 2026 relaunch of its loyalty programme as H&B&Me, designed around simplicity, instant points, and removing friction, reflects this shift. As its chief marketing officer put it, the goal was to “deliver immediate value” rather than gamify the experience. PayPal’s Dave Jones, whose PayPal+ loyalty programme attracted three million enrolments in its first few months, was even more direct: “That increased prevalence of schemes correlates with consumers being less loyal.”
A spin wheel treats every shopper the same. A personalised price on an item a shopper actually buys treats them as an individual. The difference is the difference between entertainment and value. Gamification provides entertainment. Personalisation provides value. The shoppers who stay are the ones who feel understood, not the ones who feel played.
Gamification made shopping more fun. It did not make shoppers more faithful. The industry that borrowed mechanics from casinos might want to remember what casinos already know: the house wins because the player keeps coming back for the next game, not because the player is loyal to the building.
