Cashiers and other drones will sometimes have quotas to make. Some of the quotas are chain wide, sometimes it’s just a manager telling a particular cashier “your numbers on <whatever> are low, you need to start pushing <whatever> harder”, with the implication that the cashier’s performance rating or even job depends on bringing those numbers up. Loyalty cards are sort of like cats. Most people who want one already have one, or know how to get one. Nagging someone to take a card or a cat does little except to aggravate that person.
There are apps that all family members can update lists on and retrieve while they’re out and around (my husband and I use Cozi, but others exist). Either of us can update lists from his/her phone or computer, and look up those lists while shopping. Seems more convenient to me than the whiteboard photo system, but YMMV.
OK, NitroPress your turn. Please explain to me like I’m five, how is them knowing I bought a jar of peanut butter, a box of condoms and a bottle of rubbing alcohol yesterday going to negatively impact me. Why is it a bad thing to be ‘targeted more specifically for more purchases’? It doesn’t mean I am obligated to buy what they suggest.
Winn Dixie offers a reward card for shoppers. I think your get free gas after so many purchases. Even though the price of the groceries is the same without the card, I can’t help wondering how much more expensive groceries are at that store to help pay for this rewards program.
A local news channel does a comparison of grocery staples prices regularly; the stores with the loyalty cards (Safeway and Co-op in my local area) always have the highest prices.
Really, don’t worry about it. Just give them [del]your[/del] Jenny’s phone number (Area Code + 867-5309). This trick has been around for so long that pretty much every loyalty card everywhere accepts it.
Read for comprehension, I derive plenty of benefit from these cards with NO downside. Also, again, I don’t care who knows what I buy.
Let me ask you, why should I? Not about cards or targeted marketing or any of that nonsense, but why, specifically, should I care if someone knows what I bought?
Facebook is a commercial website that has ads on it. But before you say it (because I know you’re thinking it), that does not make Facebook users “the product.” That’s just some tin-foil hat bullshit that people like NitroPress love to pull out to sound smart.
I think the theory is that they’re using this information about you (and everyone else) to see how elastic demand is and will raise the price almost to your breaking point, and will learn to manipulate what they offer and how they price it to maximize their profit more than they could without this information (and thus cost you more in the long run).
I, however, welcome our new tracking overlords and see no way to fight the power.
Probably correct, as far as it goes. The point is that the whole continuum of consumer monitoring and manipulation is not about any one thing - many replies here have tried to bring it down to a single issue, whether to agree or disagree, and it’s not that compact. It’s about that entire continuum of seller/consumer interaction. Reducing it to one absurd point is, well, absurd.
Believe it or not, Facebook has a massive competitor in Google+ and thousands of other minor competitors in related niches (including this very message board). Pissing off the populace with too many ads or ads that are too intrusive will push them away. Any business that treats their users like “the product” does so at their own peril because brand loyalty is at an all-time low.
Still waiting for the answer to this question too: “Let me ask you, why should I? Not about cards or targeted marketing or any of that nonsense, but why, specifically, should I care if someone knows what I bought?”
Because it’s important; it doesn’t seem important that some data-miner somewhere knows that you buy peanut butter, but it is. They wouldn’t be spending all this time and money on it if it wasn’t, and you can bet that the end results benefit the companies, not you.
