November 2008

Groupe Aeroplan imports customer-driven insight
and data analytics business to North America
LMG Insight & Communication plans to offer retailers unprecedented insight into consumers’ shopping habits.

MONTREAL - Groupe Aeroplan Inc. has announced it is launching its highly successful UK-based customer-driven insight and communication business in North America, with offices based in Toronto and Chicago. LMG Insight & Communication (I&C) and its industry leading data analytics tool, “Self Serve,” is designed provide retailers with unprecedented insight into consumers’ shopping habits as well as the ability to work with consumer packaged goods companies to develop targeted product communications. This combination will help retailers and their vendors to make better, faster decisions related to key areas such as product assortment, promotions, pricing, and new product development, as well as enabling them to directly communicate with key customer segments.

Leveraging experience
“Today’s announcement is another tangible example of how we are leveraging the expertise of our UK colleagues. They have built a highly successful business that has a compelling and very timely proposition - they are providing a way for retailers and their suppliers to differentiate themselves on an ongoing basis in an extremely competitive, ever-changing environment,” said Rupert Duchesne, President and Chief Executive Officer, Groupe Aeroplan Inc., in a statement. “This division has been both groundbreaking and successful in the UK and we look forward to building on this achievement by focusing on LMG I&C’s international growth and strengthening our position as a global leader in the management of loyalty programs.”

Brian Jones heads up the LMG I&C Canadian business and Mike Blyth has been appointed to manage LMG I&C in the United States. They bring a strong combination of loyalty, market research, database analytics, and consumer packaged goods experience. Mike was previously Executive Vice President, Global Practice Leader, Loyalty Analytics at Information Resources Incorporated (IRI) and has close to thirty years of extensive commercial experience in the US retail market.

How it works
Self Serve provides retailers and consumer packaged goods companies desktop access to insight from point of sale and loyalty card data. The data can tell what these shoppers look like in terms of demographic profiles, where they live, their household composition and frequency of certain retail visits.

The information can also be used to look at a particular day, product sku and store, to understand what else is being purchased as part of a shopper’s repertoire in order to make better business decisions.

“There could be difficult times ahead for retailers as many consumers potentially change their spending habits in response to the softening economy. These changes could include where they shop, what they buy, and how much they spend, which in turn create a range of challenges for retailers and their suppliers,” said Peter Gleason, Managing Director, LMG I&C. “LMG I&C services enable retailers and their vendors to proactively manage their business through identifying their customers’ changing habits - as they happen. We can help them adapt quickly to consumer shopping trends by providing concise and actionable insight at the individual customer and store level. This level of market intelligence enables timely, relevant, and targeted product communications and promotional offers directed to specific customer segments,” added Gleason.

Insight & Communication, created by Groupe Aeroplan’s Loyalty Management Group (LMG) in March 2007, launched its business in the UK with Sainsbury’s, one of the largest grocery retailers in the country, providing data driven insights to Sainsbury’s merchandising and marketing teams. Additionally, Sainsbury data insights are provided to over 50 consumer packaged goods companies including Danone, HJHeinz, Kellogg’s, Kimberly Clark, Nestle, PepsiCo and Unilever. The customer insights align the vendor with the retailers merchandising strategies while providing each stakeholder a unique ability to communicate directly with targeted consumer segments. With the support of LMG I&C, Sainsbury’s day-to-day marketing and merchandising decisions are based on customer input, driven through the insight received through 3 million customer transactions per day. Source: Groupe Aeroplan Inc.

About Groupe Aeroplan Inc.
Groupe Aeroplan Inc. is a leading international loyalty management corporation. Groupe Aeroplan owns Aeroplan, Canada’s premier loyalty program and Nectar, the United Kingdom’s leading coalition loyalty program. In the Gulf Region, Groupe Aeroplan owns 60 per cent of Rewards Management Middle East, the operator of Air Miles programs in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. Groupe Aeroplan also operates LMG Insight & Communication, a customer-driven insight and data analytics business offering worldwide services to retailers and their suppliers.
For more information about Groupe Aeroplan, please visit www.groupeaeroplan.com.