In the U.S., at any rate. I’m Canadian and whenever I visit the U.S. I get irritated by the stupid two-level pricing. In Canada, we have cards where you can earn bonus points of various kinds, but there’s no punitive pricing for not having one.
"Rewards cards" are 100% about tracking your purchases. All else is window dressing.
They have to get you to use a card, since they aren’t allowed to do it any other way. (I believe it’s illegal in many jurisdictions to use things like checking account and credit card numbers to ID purchases, and that would be only partially reliable anyway.) By getting you to produce your card, the stores can track every consumer decision you make there, and then pass that information up the line to their wholesalers and manufacturers, as well as sell it to data aggregators like Acxiom.
It isn’t particularly important for them to link this data to your personal data, although in most cases they do and it helps their interpretation. So using a fake name, number etc. may give you a chuckle but it’s still feeding them the information about what you buy.
There is no greater prize in consumer research than grocery store receipts that show the combinations and correlations of what you buy. Which is why these cards have become so common and why we’ve been conditioned into using them. It also makes “membership” stores like Sam’s Club, Costco and BJs consumer research labs the likes of which you couldn’t better with infinite time, budget and lack of limiting laws, because the additional “features” of membership mean they can track a wider range of your activities, including every store visit.
They should be outlawed, really. I suspect that’s the case in Canada, where retailers are not allowed to tier pricing by this method and have to use the less effective return-rewards system.
There are no discounts. If the whole program didn’t exist, the prices would be the “member price.” They raise the “price” and then “discount” it to the real price so you have to use the card.
“Actually”, you say as you lean forward conspiritorally, “Is there any way you could charge me a little more?” <million watt grin>
Six of one, a half dozen of the other. If they raise all their prices, then people will buy less and they make less money. Again, its crazy to think retailers would suck the expense of raising every price in their store just to get customer data. There are much cheaper ways to find out who is buying what then offering universal and constant discounts.
Yep. That’s why I get oddball combinations of items to do my little part of corrupting their data.
So some day when you get a special offer for duct tape and tooth paste, that was me.
But you’re missing the point of having the consumer data. It’s so they can sell more products. They’re not losing any money by raising the prices artificially only to “discount” them, but they are increasing the likelihood that people will use their membership cards so they can more effectively target the marketing of other products. There aren’t really cheaper ways to find out who is buying what, given that the scheme they have now doesn’t really cost them anything to do, and results in more specific purchasing data which results in more products sold.
I threw away all of my cards. When I get to the cashier I tell them I forgot my card at home. They either have me punch in my phone number or they use a generic card to give me the lower prices. This has worked approx. 5000 out of 5000 times so far.
Well, that’s the spirit, certainly. But it’s like giving weird answers on marketing surveys; they get SD’ed out.
It’s bad enough we can’t scratch our ass without it becoming part of our big data records; people (pardon me, peeps) shouldn’t be voluntarily cooperating with the shits.
They almost certainly do. Unless you take very specific measures and are extrenmely careful about you apps you use, there’s likely no security on your device. They can, and almost certainly have, pulled everything they want from your phone.
“Do you have our rewards card?”
“No.”
“Would you like one? You save x% today!”
“OK”
“Remember to register it on our website.”
“OK.”
<throws card in the back seat of the car, with all the other cards.
Lather, rinse, repeat.>
Add another one to that list. I get the card, toss it and use a phone number I haven’t had for many years. If I get email from them, I immediately flag it as spam, and it’s automatically sent to the spam file.
If you have a phone number, you can use that instead of actually carrying around the stupid cards.
Seems like you’re losing out on the carrying-stuff issue, having to carry a smartphone instead of a few thin pieces of plastic.
What particularly bothered me about the office supply stuff today is that I ALREADY have a business account with them. They have a record of every purchase I make along with all my business information.
And I had a separate rewards card that was supposed to give me cash back for purchases od certain types of products.
This was yet a THIRD program by the SAME store for ink and toner, as if having the first two cards was not already enough.
It doesn’t matter if it’s actual cards or phone apps or if I have to carry them around with me or not. It’s get your damned shit together and don’t keep making me have to sign up for MORE programs at a store I already shop at for all my office supply needs.
I totally get the annoyance of having a ton of the cards in your wallet or cluttering up your keychain. I use an app for storing mine, but 99% of the time I just punch in my phone number since some stores can’t seem to scan the code off my phone.
The thing I don’t understand is the paranoia about the stores tracking your purchases. Could someone give me a worst case scenario about the store knowing my shopping habits? Are they going to know which day I’m going to buy what item and will be able to put the poison in my Cheerios when they’ve decided that they’ve collected enough of my money?
Seriously, I’d like to know why people care if a store tracks your purchases? It’s not like there is someone specifically pulling up your name to see what you’re buying. Your purchasing habits are just being compiled with thousand or millions of other people and nobody actually cares what YOU are buying.
Cite please?
Do you have any idea how those apps work? It literally takes a picture of a barcode, you put in a name so you know what it’s for, and then it brings that barcode back up whenever you need it. Now you can argue that the app maker has access to that information (even though you view the actual permissions to see what they have access to), but there’s no way that putting what it basically a string of numbers into a app transmits your data to the store. It’s a bunch of lines, it’s not magic.
If anyone, anywhere in the loop, has information, it will make its way to one of the collated market research databases. Bet on it.
A lot of people who think they are being very smart because they only give this driblet here and another driblet somewhere else would be shocked to know how many driblets
Acxiom or even Google have in their file.
They do track your purchases with your info. I use a Kroger card (parent company of Fry’s and a number of others) that gives me discounts on gas at their stations and Shell. It also alerts me to any recalled products that I have purchased recently (this is especially important, as that is where I get prescriptions filled).
They don’t mail me anything, although I’ve not changed any of my registration info over several address, phone number and e-mail changes, with the prescription info, they have the home address and a phone number. The only time I hear from them is when I have a pick up ready at the pharmacy.
I fill up my tank there about once a month for cheap. I spend somewhat less there than I used to at WalMart, more because I don’t have $100 worth of crap in my buggy before I ever get to the grocery end. 
It’s true, but at the same time, the store learns stuff about you when it sees what you buy together, even if you pay cash, use a disguise and don’t have a rewards card.
(BTW, I’ve linked to this previously, but here’s an article from the New York Times that describes how Target Stores used customer purchase data to identify which of its customers were pregnant, in some cases before the customer shared that info with anyone in her family.)