Waitrose is confusing!

Waitrose is confusing me, and not just because of their price promotion: "New lower prices on hundreds of everyday items." As well as telling me that I’ve been overpaying for years, it also emphasises their weakest point while fighting their competition on their ground. In my opinion, Waitrose should be playing to my confirmation bias; I pay more so I must be getting…higher quality food / better service / a nicer environment / etc. But these are retail concerns, and not what is really confusing me.

A quick bit of background. Waitrose used to give away The Times and tea or coffee with your Waitrose card, and then switched to vouchers via their app, presumably to harvest data as the quid pro quo for money off.

From the outside, Waitrose appears to have followed a classic MVP approach. When the vouchers started, they offered money off (for example, 50p off milk) but there were no business rules requiring the purchase of the item (i.e. milk), so effectively the vouchers were free money. As time has passed the vouchers have become more restrictive: first, the vouchers required the purchase of the associated item; now they mandate the brand and size. It is still money off but it somehow feels less valuable/worthwhile.

What confuses me is that I would have recommended the same approach (start basic; prove it is valuable; refine the process; iterate and learn) and, as a user, I don’t like it. What I am wondering is:

• Do we need to be clearer with users that we are building a ‘work in progress’?

• Would I have been happier if the changes were clearer?

• Did users assume there were rules so have not seen any changes?

We can’t go back to delaying business value until the end when everything is built, but we need to find a way to take users with us. Perhaps we need a wider interpretation of ‘minimum’; perhaps we need a different understanding of ‘viable’; I think ‘product’ can be left alone. All food for thought.

1. What specific changes have been made to the Waitrose voucher system over time, and how have these changes affected the perceived value of the vouchers? I have had to extrapolate from my own experience of the Waitrose voucher scheme because I have no inside knowledge of the system, so I can't provide specific details about the nature of these changes and how they have influenced customers' perceptions of the voucher program.
   

2. In what ways could Waitrose have communicated the iterative nature of their approach to users more effectively, ensuring transparency and managing user expectations about the evolving voucher system? I am not sure if clearer communication regarding the iterative nature of the voucher system would have made me (or anyone else) happier, and I am not sure of the potential communication strategies or ways Waitrose could have conveyed the evolving nature of the program more effectively.
   

3. How do customers' assumptions about the rules and features of the voucher system impact their perception of the changes made by Waitrose, and how can businesses better address and clarify these assumptions during the iterative development? The Waitrose example raises questions about whether users assumed there were rules in place, affecting their perception of changes, but I have not delved into the specifics of these assumptions. Wider user testing or research might have answered this question of customer assumptions during the ongoing development of such programs.