CITEOScore: Can loyalty incentives support lower-packaging shopping?
During a 2024 studio project with Citeo, a French producer-responsibility organization, our team investigated how shoppers respond to lower-packaging and reuse options in supermarkets.
We conducted 15 public intercept interviews with 17 shoppers in Paris, then developed a concept called CITEOScore: a product-impact score linked to points in retailer loyalty programmes. The proposal began with a simple premise. If shoppers could earn a visible reward for choosing a lower-impact product, could an existing loyalty system make that choice easier?
Our interviews made that premise less certain. Price and convenience shaped many decisions more directly than environmental claims. Several participants described loyalty accounts as passive, excessive, or difficult to understand. The project therefore became less about designing a new rewards system and more about identifying the conditions under which an incentive could be credible, useful, and fair.
Starting point
Citeo asked our studio to explore the future of the physical supermarket aisle as retailers introduce lower-packaging, refill, and reuse options.
The brief covered food, cosmetics, hygiene, and cleaning products. Rather than begin with a solution for packaging itself, we wanted to understand the everyday conditions around a supermarket decision:
- How do shoppers choose where to shop?
- What do they understand by recyclable and reusable packaging?
- What role do price, convenience, and loyalty programmes play?
- Could an incentive encourage a lower-impact choice without asking people to adopt another app or account?
Field inquiry
We ran two rounds of public intercept interviews.
In April, we spoke with nine people across eight conversations in the Jardin des Tuileries. In May, we spoke with eight people across seven conversations in a shopping centre. The conversations covered store choice, packaging habits, reusable containers, retailer accounts, digital catalogues, and loyalty points.
This was exploratory research with a small convenience sample. It did not aim to represent French shoppers as a whole.
The discussion guide changed between rounds. Early conversations prompted us to ask more directly about loyalty programmes, catalogues, and reward systems in the second round. That shift changed the language in the transcripts, so I treat the word-count difference as evidence of our evolving research focus rather than evidence that loyalty mattered more to the second group.
We reviewed the transcripts and created working themes. We did not conduct a formal coded analysis, and the findings should be read as directional observations that informed the concept work.
nine people, three counts
What shoppers told us
Convenience shaped store choice
Participants often described proximity, habit, and price before they mentioned environmental considerations. One participant called proximity their “only criterion” for choosing a supermarket. This did not make sustainability irrelevant, but it placed it within a routine shaped by time, distance, and household budgets.
Reusable packaging lacked a shared definition
Several people could describe recyclable packaging but struggled to explain what reusable packaging would mean in practice. Some mentioned egg cartons or jam jars. Others said they rarely encountered it at all.
That gap mattered. A refill or reuse system cannot rely on users understanding its environmental logic before they see it, trust it, and know what to do with it.
Loyalty accounts accumulated without much commitment
Many participants already held retailer accounts. They often described accepting them at checkout because they were free or might become useful later. One participant described agreeing whenever a cashier offered an account; another showed a phone folder filled with retailer apps.
This saturation made a new sustainability app seem unrealistic. It also raised a harder question: if existing loyalty systems already feel passive or opaque, would adding environmental rewards change behaviour?
Financial incentives had limits
A few participants were open to an incentive if it created a clear saving. Others said that loyalty points would not influence their choices.
The interviews did not support loyalty points as a universal lever. They suggested a narrower opportunity for shoppers who already weigh price, convenience, and small financial gains together.
From findings to a design hypothesis
We developed three provisional shopper profiles and three candidate directions:
- Helping shoppers remember reusable containers
- Addressing hygiene concerns around bulk purchasing
- Using loyalty programmes to reward lower-impact choices
We selected the third direction because it worked within infrastructure shoppers already carried. This was a design hypothesis, not a conclusion established by the interviews.
We asked:
Could a retailer’s existing loyalty programme reward lower-impact choices without requiring another account, another app, or another unfamiliar behaviour?
three profiles
in the shop
at home
three directions
The CITEOScore proposal
We proposed CITEOScore, a 0 to 100 sustainability score attached to an individual product. The score combined four categories.
| Category | Proposed considerations |
|---|---|
| Packaging | Recyclability, biodegradability, recycled content, chemical composition |
| Logistics | Transport distance and carbon footprint |
| Production | Water use, energy use, and waste |
| Consumer use | Expected product lifespan |
We proposed four steps for calculating it:
- Collect product data
- Normalize each category to a 0 to 100 scale
- Apply category weights
- Calculate a weighted total score
Retailers could surface the result at the shelf or on packaging. Products with stronger scores could earn more points through the loyalty programme a shopper already used.
We illustrated the intended behaviour with three bags of carrots: a lower-impact product could cost more at the shelf while returning more reward points. The comparison made the trade-off legible, but we did not establish whether the points would offset a meaningful share of the price difference.
the carrot comparison
packaging mockup
Scope of the proposal
We developed the score categories, an illustrative product comparison, and a proposed connection to retailer loyalty programmes. We did not calibrate the scoring model, establish the economics of the points system, build a prototype, or validate the concept with participants.
What the concept left unresolved
We reached a useful idea and stopped before the system became credible.
A score linked to rewards depends on questions we did not answer:
- Who collects, verifies, and updates product-impact data?
- How would Citeo, brands, and retailers agree on score weights?
- Who funds the reward points?
- What is one point worth to a shopper?
- Would a reward need to appear at the shelf, at checkout, or later in an account to influence a decision?
- Which shoppers would respond to the incentive, and who would find it irrelevant?
These are design questions as much as business or policy questions. A score can only guide behaviour if shoppers understand it, trust its governance, and see a benefit that matters within a real shopping trip.
Reflection
The fieldwork changed the project in a valuable way. We began with packaging and reuse, then found ourselves studying price, convenience, retailer infrastructure, and the limits of individual incentives.
We presented the loyalty mechanism as more settled than our evidence warranted. The interviews identified a possible audience for incentives, and they also showed that loyalty points would not persuade everyone. We should have named that boundary rather than implying broad adoption.
Looking back, I would present the research differently. We reported only the second round in the final deck, even though the first round shaped the direction of the project. The omission made the study appear narrower and less grounded than it was.
I would approach a next iteration through three tests:
- Test whether shoppers understand and trust different score formats
- Compare immediate discounts, delayed loyalty points, and non-financial prompts
- Map the governance, data, and funding relationships required to operate the system
The strongest outcome from this project is not a finished reward scheme. It is a more precise research question: what has to be true for a sustainability incentive to earn trust and change a routine purchase?