The Marriage of Retail Marketing and Information Systems Technology: The Zellers Club Z Experience

The paper examines the major influences and events that led to the creation and implementation of Club Z, a very successful frequent buyer program, by Zellers Inc., a Canadian mass merchandiser and a division of the Hudson’s Bay Company. While the paper describes this major retailer’s innovation in the adaptation of computer technology to store-level marketing, it also analyzes some of the significant aspects of the Club Z implementation from an IS management perspective: how a champion emerged to advocate and protect the project at the highest executive level; how an outside systems consulting firm was brought in to manage the Zellers IS function during the project life; and how the cultural problem of anticipated store resistance to the required new technology was overcome.