Credit Cards

Sports Authority Inc. opened its first store in 1987 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is now the US's largest full line sporting goods retailer and has over 400 stores in 45 US States.

The Sports Authority sales are driven by the calendar and so they wanted to respond to existing and new customers in key markets around the busiest shopping periods. Just like any other retailer they gather information about their customers at the point of sale. This information is collected when a customer uses a credit card in their store. The information that they will be provided with back at head office will be the customer's name, their address etc. They have achieved this with the use of point of sale data analysis and interaction with a fully automated customer database.

The whole idea of the Sports Authority using credit card information is in order for them to identify those customers and then using a print on demand system. Which results in them being able to send the appropriate direct mail offer to that particular customer all within one week of them entering one of their stores and making a purchase. There are few retailers across the US who has been able to accomplish or duplicate this.

Normally any promotions that they do carry out using Sport Authority credit card information will be focusing on their in store customers rather than those who use their website or catalog.

So in order for the Sports Authority to make the most of the busiest selling periods they will use both mass marketing as well as targeted direct mail in order to bring customers into their stores. The use of the Sport Authority credit card information has allowed them to bring customers back to them time after time as cost effectively as possible. However, what should be noted that the Sports Authority credit card information they use is used only by them and they do not provide it to third parties. So if you happen to be worried about credit card fraud then do not be as they keep all the information to themselves.