Why do customers leave loyalty programmes? Key takeaways: * Irrelevant offers are the biggest red flag in UK loyalty, and the most common reason shoppers walk away. * Members who feel no different to regular customers are almost twice as likely to leave. * Shoppers want simple, visible value and offers that fit what they buy. Loyalty schemes have never been more popular. Almost every UK shopper belongs to at least one, and most carry several in their wallet or phone. Yet popularity and loyalty are two very different things. More than half of shoppers feel less loyal to retailers than they did three years ago, and more than one in five have stopped shopping somewhere because of its loyalty programme. So why do customers leave loyalty programmes, and what can retailers do about it? To find out, HyperFinity partnered with Eagle Eye and Bloomreach on the Retail Loyalty Index Pulse 2026, a survey of 2,000 UK shoppers about what frustrates them, what keeps them coming back and what finally makes them leave. Their answers point to a clear conclusion. Shoppers haven't lost interest in loyalty. They've lost patience with schemes that don't feel like they were built for them. Membership is easy. Loyalty is earned. Think about how most people use a loyalty scheme today. They scan a card or app at the till, almost without thinking. Then they forget about it until the next shop. Nine in 10 shoppers use their scheme this way on most visits. However, only a third say it makes them genuinely more loyal. That gap matters. A scheme that runs on habit alone holds customers only until a cheaper rival or a better offer appears. For retailers, high sign-up and scan rates can mask a programme that isn't actually changing behaviour. Engagement still pays off, though. Shoppers who use their scheme on every or most visits are nearly twice as likely to say a good programme decides where they shop. The challenge is turning that everyday scan into a genuine reason to choose you over a competitor. Irrelevant offers are the main reason customers leave loyalty programmes. The single biggest red flag in UK loyalty is irrelevant offers, named by more than half of shoppers. It's also the most common reason people give for walking away. Picture a household without a pet receiving dog food vouchers. Or a regular who only ever buys fresh produce being pushed towards frozen ready meals. Each mismatch tells the shopper the same thing: this retailer doesn't really know me. Interestingly, shoppers rarely list personalisation as a reward they want. Yet almost eight in 10 expect their offers to be tailored. In other words, relevance has become a baseline expectation. Customers don't thank you for getting it right, but they certainly notice when you get it wrong. The good news is that the fix rarely requires new data. Shoppers are generally comfortable sharing their information, with personal data requests coming bottom of the red flag list. What they want is to see it used. Most retailers already hold a detailed record of what each customer buys. So the opportunity lies in putting that history to work. Customers who feel ordinary are quicker to leave loyalty programmes. Imagine shopping somewhere every week for years, then receiving exactly the same generic email as someone who signed up yesterday. Six in 10 loyalty members say they've felt no different to a regular customer. As a result, those customers are almost twice as likely to have left a retailer because of its loyalty programme. Recognition doesn't have to be expensive. Member-only prices make the benefit of joining visible every time someone shops. A well-timed surprise also shows that someone has noticed, whether it's a free coffee after a run of visits or a treat on a customer's favourite product. These small moments do more to build loyalty than another round of blanket discounts. Simple value beats clever mechanics. Taken together, the Pulse shows that loyalty is far from broken. Shoppers still use their schemes, share their data and reward retailers who get it right. What they want in return is value they can see, offers that fit what they buy and the sense that their membership counts. The prize for getting this right is significant. Almost two thirds of shoppers say a good loyalty programme often or always decides where they shop. The report sets out six practical ways to get there, from making every offer earn its place to recognising members rather than simply registering them. Every red flag can be fixed, and the retailers who fix them first will earn loyalty that lasts. There's much more in the full report. Download the Retail Loyalty Index Pulse 2026 to find out how rising household costs are reshaping loyalty, how comfortable shoppers really are with AI-powered personalisation, and why younger and older shoppers want very different things from the same programme. You'll also get the complete red and green flag leaderboards and all six fixes. And if you'd like to see how your own programme measures up, get in touch with its team. FAQs.

Retail technology innovation of the week: TheCode builds a data and AI innovation first environment. Retail Technology Innovation of the Week is a series brought to you by RTIH, highlighting stand out deployments, launches, and initiatives by retailers and tech suppliers. Every week, Retailtechinnovationhub showcase forward thinking tech plays that have impressed its Editor and the Retail Technology Innovations Report judging panel, building up to the publication of the 2026 report later this year. And this week Retailtechinnovationhub is focusing on luxury fashion marketplace Love the Sales which has rebranded to TheCode and relaunched with more than 100,000 curated styles across menswear, womenswear and accessories. TheCode is an invite only marketplace, with partners selected according to product quality, positioning and their adjacency to the wider assortment. For brands and retailers, the venture says it offers a data led environment for reaching relevant customers, generating incremental demand and managing selected inventory separately from owned, full price channels. This allows partners to keep their core customers focused on new season collections while placing surplus inventory within a distinct and considered environment. Proprietary AI technology is designed to optimise how and when products are surfaced, helping partners minimise markdowns and maximise financial returns. AI powered onboarding, automated stock management and intelligent marketing also make it easier for partners to sell through the platform with minimal ongoing management. "A large assortment only becomes valuable when customers can navigate it effectively. Our proprietary AI technology helps us understand product relevance, recognise intent and create a more individual edit for every shopper," says David Bishop, Co-founder and CTO at TheCode. "Technology allows us to manage complexity for both customers and partners. The aim is not simply to show customers more products, but to help them discover the right products, and to help our partners achieve the right commercial outcome." And honourable mentions this week to... HyperFinity has partnered with JD Sports to design and deliver a personalisation programme that aims to equip the retailer with a clear evidence base for its loyalty strategy. It has designed a personalisation engine and trialled this to build a framework for JD Sports UK. The solution was trialled to prove: The value of 'buy again' category offers to assess how active customers respond to identify the optimal spend multiplier incentives; The optimal incentive mix for high and low spenders for cash-based rewards versus spend multipliers; The ability to drive incremental basket spend through cross-sell offers aligned to previous purchase history, testing product affinity and which category follow-ons drive incremental spend. According to those involved, the trials established that relevance consistently outperforms simply increasing incentive value, and that higher spenders respond better to spend multipliers, while lower spenders react similarly to both. Alongside this, they identified that campaign spacing must be tailored to individual behaviour to avoid offer fatigue. The partnership delivered a significant material impact on topline performance, including an uplift in total in-store loyalty sales across JD Sports UK during the trial period. Based on the results, JD Sports has identified a multi-million pound opportunity to grow in-store loyalty sales within the first year of scaling the programme. In addition to the analysis, HyperFinity delivered a suite of assets, including measurement dashboards, customer segmentations, campaign templates, and product seasonality and affinity insights, enabling JD Sports to continue building on the programme. The Home Depot The Home Depot has announced the US wide roll-out of new in-store capabilities for Magic Apron, its Al powered shopping assistant. Customers can open it in the retailer's mobile app or scan a QR code on in-store signage. "Customers come to The Home Depot for expert guidance, and we know they want their shopping experience to be easy and efficient," says Jordan Broggi, EVP of Interconnected Retail. "Magic Apron takes the best of our digital expertise and brings it into the physical store, creating a more connected shopping experience that helps customers find products, get project guidance and make decisions faster. Our associates remain at the centre of the shopping experience, and Magic Apron gives customers another way to access guidance and support while they're in our stores." This is the Holy Grail of omnichannel retail, according to Michael Guzzetta, Retail Innovation & Strategy Leader at Cookie Plug San Antonio, and a former H-E-B executive. In a LinkedIn post, he said: "It's moments like these when an AI assistant stops being just another digital feature and starts making physical promises a reality. Customers can ask questions by text, voice, or image. Then, Magic Apron can provide project guidance, check local availability, and even point someone to a specific aisle and bay. The model is the visible part for the customer, but the harder job will be for the back end teams to keep several operating systems honest at the same time: Local inventory; Aisle and bay mapping; Product compatibility; Store specific knowledge; The handoff to an associate when the answer is incomplete or wrong." He added: "Anyone who has worked around store systems knows that "aisle 14, bay 6" isn't just a helpful customer answer... It's a promise built on receiving, stocking, planogram changes, shrink, inventory accuracy, and whatever happened on the floor ten minutes ago. Now zoom out to a nationwide scale and the important questions change." "How quickly does local reality reach the assistant? How does an associate correct a bad answer? Who owns the recovery when the guidance is technically sound but the product isn't actually there?" Magic Apron is compelling because it connects advice to the physical store, Guzzetta argues. Its biggest test will be how often the store can keep the promise its digital friend just made.