What costs to my wallet? What costs to my choice? What costs to my privacy? I willingly give them information about myself and what I buy and want to buy, and so far as I can tell, in return they stock stuff I want to buy and make it easier and cheaper for me to shop, including significant discounts on fuel for my car.
You make accusations against them with no factual support. You don’t want them to know about you, fine, don’t shop there or only pay cash and then shred your receipt and burn the pieces or eat them. I’m enjoying my coupons and fuel discounts.
I do the fast food surveys all the time. The McD’s BOGO Quarter-Pounder/Egg McMuffin is a pretty good one, as is Popeye’s free 2-piece dinner if you buy a 3-piece dinner.
Of course you are. You’re supposed to, and it distracts you from both the real outcome and the rather invasive nature of the process.
I could easily write a monstrous wall o’text reply here without pausing for breath, but let me keep it compact.
If the store bluntly said, “Here’s your customer serial number. Give it to the checker each time you buy anything here, so that we can track all of your activities” - are you likely to comply? Say no? Say some variation of “Fork yew”? The last was what most people did when Radio Shack tried to obnoxiously demand phone numbers for every purchase, for precisely that reason. Few people want the store tracking and monitoring their purchases and other activity.
So we dress it up as a “discount” or “loyalty” or “savings” card and tie it to customer benefits - use the card and get discounted prices, reward tokens (my local grocery gives ‘coins’), even cash-back rebates once a year or whatever. Now it’s not for tracking or monitoring, oh, no - it’s for your benefit and reward. (Right.)
Rewards cards have limits in that they can only ask so much information on the sign-up form and it’s often unreliable (as you clever, clever ones give them false info; also, has anyone every gone in and updated their information?) - which in no way limits the card’s function for tracking and coordinating purchases for “Shopper X24308-2.” To get deeper connections to customer identity and data, they have to tie it to other sources… and things like email addresses, phone numbers, and so forth are invaluable indexes.
Either signing up for email receipts or “participating in our on-line survey” forces you to provide current, legit contact indexes, and can be used by any store, even those that cannot or will not use any kind of “member card.” (Home Depot, for example.) Most ask for other information, sometimes indirectly. In any case, the primary function is to connect your generic “shopper ID” to the bigger you out there in the data world. The surveys are all but disposable; the prizes are trivial compared to the value of the data that will be mine-able from your close cooperation and self-identification.
Okay, so what, big deal… you got your discount or reward or cash back or free bag of fries of whatever, so win-win, right? Wrong - unless you consider ‘carnival slum’ adequate payment for privacy invasion and reduction of your choices as a consumer.
Most such programs to track shopping and mine data from consumers are not run by the individual store, or even the chain. They are run by data aggregators and marketing firms whose names you probably wouldn’t recognize if I listed them (ever heard of Acxiom, for example? They’re almost well-known but there are hundreds of others). The data is not used by your fren’ly local grocer to make sure they have your brand of cookies on the shelf. Some data is used within larger chains - but probably not the data you think, nor to the ends you believe - but most of it is passed up the chain to the product manufacturers and wholesalers, as coin of the realm. It buys grocers premium product placement, discounts, marketing co-op dollars, and the like.
Yes… the grocery stores themselves are signing up for “rewards cards” to get prizes and discounts… and paying for it with your data.
At the level the data is actually used, amid marketing analysis firms and megacorps like FritoLay, General Foods, CocaCola, Kraft, it is used in almost incomprehensibly deep and complex ways to analyze the marketplace, to fine granularity and with sophisticated inferences, to… no, not make sure the stores stock your favorite cookies. It’s used in a subtle inversion of that: to find out* what you can be made to buy*. Try that again: they aren’t doing it to better find out where to ship that next truckload of Oreos. They are trying to find out where they can control a product presentation and choice for maximized profits and maximum suppression of the competition.
One more pass: the result is not that you end up with mo’ bettah choices on the shelf because your data says you like mint Oreos or Cap’n Crunch PurpleBerries or whatever. You end up with fewer choices, because the result is a reduction of products to those that aren’t just best-selling, not even those that are most profitable, but those that show the most promise for making people buy them. (Those aren’t all quite the same thing, and the ultimate goal is maximum control of the maximum number of shopper’s actions, to feed profits and outmaneuver competition.)
Executive Summary: They are using the trivial bits of information you give them to do widespread data-mining on you as an individual to apply big-data analysis to limit your store experience to a structured process that will extract the maximum amount of money from you.
Punchline: And making you feel good because you won a free burrito.
It is very unlikely that the actual content of such surveys ever ends up in any useful place. At most, the numbers might be tallied and summarized and pass some senior executive’s desk… for a glance and filing. They aren’t the real point of these efforts.
The use of surveys to rate cashiers is another issue - it’s turning the cashiers into employees who essentially have to beg each customer to help them keep their job. Coercing customers to fill out the survey and give them a high rating is right up there with using little crippled children to beg for money - if they don’t get enough of their customers to comply, and don’t get a high enough rating (typically, anything but a tick under the maximum 5 stars or 10-of-10), they’re likely to get fired, get hours reduced, not get raises or just take extra shit. They might be a great checker - fast, polite, accurate, helpful, good at helping you keep your kids happy - but if they aren’t good at coercing you to rate them (which, see above, has little to do in the long run with that rating), they’re reamed.
Even to what extent such ratings are legitimate and used - it’s a case of the store getting you to do management’s job for them. A store manager should know if an employee is crappy. If he or she doesn’t, they don’t belong in the job. Turning it over to a soulless, misdirecting “customer survey and rating” is the mark of an employer that has no real regard for its employees except as cogs to be replaced the minute they aren’t meeting maximum demand.
Really short summary: It’s all a shuck, people, and it’s not what you’re led to believe it’s about, and it’s not - not not not - for your benefit in any way. Free turkeys, burritos and discount coupons included.
Basically, unless you are a paranoid tin foil hatter who thinks the government is out to get him, loyalty cards are fine and all you’ll get in return are discounts.
Other tinfoil aficionados might want to read Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, which doesn’t deal too directly with things like loyalty cards, but paints an absolutely terrifying picture of how the food conglomerates work in this respect… and does so through the baldly honest interview words of many high-placed figures still in the industry. The people who run CocaCola, Kraft, GF etc. and manage their marketing/product arms are happy to talk candidly about what a massive consumer-crushing machine their companies are, because they know it won’t make any difference. Giving people free prizes keeps them completely squee and thrilled with the process.
The paragraph after the one I quoted from the New York Times article begins:
There are few issues where I have a hard time understanding where the other side is coming from. But being okay with this massive, unavoidable loss of privacy is one of them. I certainly understand where the company is coming from. They get to run their business better and make more money. I can’t see how this is worth a tiny discount for me, though, and don’t get why a consumer would defend such practices. Is there really no type of data collection that would be crossing the line?
AB, stores giving me gas discount credit is not the same as tattooing a serial number on my arm.
If some people are paranoid about others has their personal info, fine. But it’s not as sinister as you are making it out to be. Of course they need to know about my shopping habits if they are to stock what I want.
I’m strong enough to buy what I want and not what I don’t.
I fill out the surveys. I love that they track my buying habits. It means they’ll stock the stuff I want.
Everybody already has all your personal info anyways, especially the gubbamint, so I don’t see what’s the harm in them knowing that I buy chedder cheese, coco puffs and chili lime beef jerky.
How do you propose that customers remove themselves from this data collection? We live in an electronic society, every electronic interaction is potential for datamining. Can you demonstrate what I have lost from this knowledge? Have I lost anything that would make up for the convenience of online services and shared health data throughout the hospital system and the literally thousands of dollars I have saved via the use of loyalty cards?
First, answer the question. Then suggest a realistic alternative. You can’t; nobody can. I will take all the benefits, thank you. Anybody who wouldn’t in this modern world is, well, a barbarian.
Indicating that you really don’t understand the scope of the issues. I’m not being paranoid or hysterical; you are saying the equivalent of “But Daddy, I’ll only play *between *the lanes on the freeway.”
The surveys - from the receipt ones to the top-level marketing ones - have absolutely nothing to do with “stocking what you want to buy.” Nothing. That you believe so is further indication that you don’t really know what’s going on here.
“…and I’ll stay away from the fast lanes, promise. Cross my heart.”
I believe otherwise. And I believe that to do so is an imperative on the level of coping with global climate change, corralling radical Islam and getting partisan roadblocking out of government.
Enjoy the burritos and the gas discounts. Just don’t think about the cost… and prepare to maintain your cheerfulness when the bill finally reaches you.
(BTW, Xap, you have all contact channels blocked. I was going to PM you something of outside interest but I can’t.)
I put a value on the privacy I’ve lost, so where I end up is that while it’s potentially inevitable and definitely impossible for me to stop them, I won’t actively help the aggregaters. So, for example, I don’t do surveys and my loyalty card usage is minimal and possibly confounding.
Your mention of hospital systems is interesting, though. They have to follow regulations that at least attempt to keep your information private. I think it would be great if similar steps were taken in other industries as well.
Do what I do–get several people to share one loyalty card, or a whole group sharing two or three and switching amongst. Bonus points if they live in different neighborhoods, shop in different branches, and/or have wildly divergent lifestyles. Screw with their data collection.
The pet shop isn’t sure whether “I” own 17 cats or a whole flock of parakeets; the gas station thinks it knows that sometimes “I” buy diesel in Kansas and sometimes “I” buy gasoline in Missouri. The names and phone numbers and emails associated with these accounts seem to change rather a lot, too.
(Of course, it does get confusing when the grocery store sends a recall notice: “did you buy sour cream last month? No, maybe Becky did.”)
What do you believe the “bill” actually is? You’ve made claims about the ways these businesses collect data and use it, but you’ve not actually shown how it will harm consumers (apart from perhaps an assumption that some loss of privacy is harmful in itself).
Getting what I want to buy more easily or more cheaply is a good thing - and even if what I want is being manipulated by businesses, that’s not inherently harmful, depending on what they are promoting.
You seem to be implying that there will be some serious harm done in the future - your reference to the bill reaching us - but you haven’t specified what that harm is.
Someone doesn’t. Perhaps the person who, a little earlier in the thread, said
In other words "The more you let them know about your data, the more you’ll influence what gets in your store. If 10 people fill out surveys, 9 buy potato chips and 1 buys Fritos, they’ll “limit your choices” and eliminate the Fritos and thus, they’re more likely to stock what you want. But if that one Fritos guy got 5 or 6 friends to also fill out the survey, they’d leave the fritos alone.
So…you know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he’s really sick and they won’t cater to him him.
And if two people fill in the survey, in harmony, they may think they’re both “faggots” and even though the GUPie* demographic is hot, they still won’t pay attention to either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin’ in, filling in the survey and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .Walkin’ in, filling in a survey and walkin’ out? Friends, they may think it’s a MOVEMENT, and that’s what it is: THE ALICE’S SUPERMARKET PRO-SURVEE-GET WHATEVER WE WANT AND TOTALLY CONTROL THE MARKET-MOVEMENT! . . . and all you gotta do to join is to sign it the next time it comes around on the cash register!
I was in Florida on vacation in December. Stopped at a Winn-Dixie for beer, and noticed that there was a discount of several dollars for using their loyalty card. Since I don’t live there, I don’t have the card.
Went up to the cashier, asked if I could get the discount anyway, and the purchase was rung up at the lower price.
Now what was really surprising, when I got back to the hotel room, the bag contained a brand spanking new loyalty card (actually 3, the credit card sized one, and two smaller keychain sized).
What information do they have about me, personally? Zero. No application, no phone number, no zip code, nothing.
I had a very similar experience with Kroger; a cashier simply gave me a loyalty card, along with a paper form to be filled in with my name, address, etc. The cashier said I could return the filled-in form on my next visit. Well, I never got around to returning that, and my loyalty card still works.
Since I generally pay with a credit card, Kroger could probably figure out who I am by correlating the loyalty card usage with my credit card data. Conceivably I could have gotten around that by paying cash, though.
I vaguely recall an episode of Forensic Files where a serial killer was caught after he used his store loyalty card to get a discount on his serial killer supplies (rope, duct tape, etc.). Undoubtedly that guy would heartily concur with Amateur Barbarian.
