| What
are the reasons to initiate your company
to launch the loyalty program?
 Emperor
Group has variety of business units and
each of them operates its own membership
system and discounts card. Since there may
have overlapped customers database within
the same Group, so it has spent individual
brand's resources in managing databases
separately. Hence, the main purpose of the
Emperor Club Membership Card is to unify
all membership systems that under different
business units of Emperor Group into one
loyalty card. Every branch shares the centralized
database for data storage and membership
management.
Building brand awareness for the whole
Emperor Group is another purpose of the
new card. We adopt the membership cards
for all our subsidiaries in the sense that
customers are made known of the newly established
Emperor Group brands. Due to the above initiatives,
we have the idea of a Group-wise loyalty
program.
There are many similar membership card systems
in existing markets. Are there any unique
features or attractive reward modules of
your program over other competitors?
 We
believe the multi-businesses nature of Emperor
Group contributes to the most unique feature
of Emperor Club. Emperor Group has sufficient
resources to develop synergy effects from
different subsidiaries and create considerable
noise and awareness to our program. With
one card, members can enjoy discounts in
variety of brands, ranging from sushi chain
stores, furniture stores, hotels to high-end
jewellery shops. Such compound benefits
enjoyed in the Card definitely are our program's
attractiveness.
Since Emperor Group comprises
various business units ranging from high-class
jewellery to popular sushi stores, what
are the challenges in the design of loyalty
program fitting the needs of different types
of customers?
 There
are 3 main challenges in our program implementation.
The first one is the issue of technical
enhancement and integration. Different brands
have own POS systems, so we need to integrate
them into a centralized one. Until now,
technical problems are time-consuming but
solvable. Another challenge is the coordination
of business units in designing the program.
Different brands have different operation
modes and business ideas. Thus, we need
to reach a mutual understanding from different
units towards the loyalty program, e.g.
terms of use and design of cards. As mentioned
above, our Group involves diverse industries
and hence a wide customer base. The derived
challenge is to design an appropriate card
system for customers with different purchasing
power.
Could you describe how
Emperor Group runs the loyalty program and
how to put members' information to good
use?
 Emperor
Club Membership Card is a smart card with
built-in chips and works with the card reader
system. Membership is divided into 4 levels:
Diamond, Platinum, Gold and Silver. Members
can check their privileges enjoyed through
the card reader and shop with discounts
in the 8 Emperor Group brands over Hong
Kong and Macau. In order to increase our
Card attractiveness, we are planning to
extend the card coverage to the Mainland
and more brands in the near future. Towards
the utilization of members' information,
we understand database is important in the
field of marketing. It stores members' information
for data mining and understanding customer
profiles. We will make use of the database
to analyze the possibility of joint promotion.
If there is an indication of purchasing
habits across a few brands, we can carry
out cross sales to enhance the Card's bargaining
power and awareness.
As cost is involved in
the program implementation, how would your
company recover the expenses in commencing
the membership program?
 In
fact, cost is not our big concern in implementing
the loyalty program. Considering the long
term cost, it is more cost effective to
manage a united Group-wise card. Once we
integrate different membership cards of
our subsidiaries into one card, the Group
can save the operating cost in managing
membership database and promoting the membership
programs for separate brands. Therefore,
we believe the expenses used in this program
can be outweighed.
What are your expectations
towards changes and benefits brought by
the loyalty program in the future?
Frankly speaking, there might not be a
huge increase in sales volume after issuing
the loyalty program shortly. Loyalty program
is not regarded as sales-orientated at the
beginning stage. Instead, we expect some
intangible benefits at this moment, including
enhanced brand image and awareness, strengthened
customer loyalty and closer internal cooperation.
These are the present targets for our program
implementation.
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