All of my roommates and I shop at the same store, because it is the cheapest, though not closest, but no far away. One of my friends went with us (first week, so we were all shopping for the first time) and was the only one who refused a savings card. She subscribes to the theory that nothing in life is free. Not the most trusting type, obviously. We tried to explain the customer loyalty that they were going for, but she wouldn’t listen. We all still think she’s kind of silly for the whole thing.
Then again, she buys the most expensive foods and is the only one who has, and never has had, a job, so that’s that.
Conclusion: Big Brother doesn’t care if I buy frozen burritos or sirloin, and I don’t care if the store knows that I prefer generic brands of mac & cheese.
The Pobes they lick their fingers
And the Pobes they lick their knives:
They spill their broth on the tablecloth
Oh, they lead disgusting lives!
The Pobes they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew;
And that is why I’m glad that I
Am not a Pobe, are you?
I still do not understand this pitting. If your under servants are not purchasing the correct joints of meat as specified by your cook, then have them disciplined.
Y’know, folks, if I were a ground-level pobe at Dept. o’ Homespun Superbity, I would be most suspicious of the sneaky folks who refuse to use loyalty cards and always pay in cash. You have to ask yourself, would they hide their personal info if they had nothing to hide? :dubious:
:shrug: No biggie. I usually stick to MPSIMS and CS, too. Threads about Survivor and cats are more my speed.
As DrDeth says, things are hwayyyyy different here than MPSIMS. When everyone starts screaming at each other, it gets a little scary.
Once again, the demographic information you give them really doesn’t mater, it just creates a longer lag before they figure out what market segment you’re in. Shoppers club cards have nothing to do with customer loyalty. It has everything to do with tracking every purchase you make and seeing how various products can be made more appealing to different groups. The main purpose of gathering the information is to stomp any competition that doesn’t gather this data. They get you to provide this information by refusing to offer discounts to you unless you provide it.
From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t actually work like this. Instead, it works more like…
Mac & cheese is worth a dollar a box. If you have their little card, it’s a dollar a box. If you don’t have the card, it’s $1.30. The ‘discount’ prices are usually pretty close to what the price is at cardless stores.
So the card members get to pay market prices, and those who decide not to have a card are charged extra for the privilege of not providing data.
You can use a false name, but the grocery doesn’t really care. They don’t want to know “John Smith buys 4 cans of tuna fish a week,” they want information about buying patterns- “Card users who buy more than 1 frozen pizza a week also buy inexpensive beer, so position the frozen pizzas just past the liquor aisle to encourage impulse purchases of beer.”
As long as I can get my diet Coke for 99 cents a 2-liter bottle, I don’t care what their mark-up is or what other people pay.
So? If I want frozen pizza and cheap beer, I’d think it was good that they’re so close to each other. Saves some time that could better be spent consuming said pizza and beer.
And then there are places like Baltimore which screw this up even more. You can’t buy beer in grocery stores here.
Neener, neener to the Big Scary “THEY” collecting information.
My first thought when I saw the garbled thread title was that it was a mis-typing of fo’c’s’le. I thought that Farmer Jack was an officer on a merchantman who had been unjustly demoted, and the thread was a pitting of his fo’c’s’ling.
Sometimes I take thread titles a little too literally.
You can say you like it or whatever, but “they” are the marketing department of the store’s parent company and they are collecting this information. You may appreciate of the convenience of having them track your purchases and adjust to maximize their revenue from you, but you have surrendered a valuable asset in exchange for paying slightly less than you ought to (and not paying substantially more) and helped them make sure they have an effective oligopoly. If you’re okay with it, fine. If you don’t like it, but need to save money on your grocery bill, that’s fine too. Buut don’t pretend that’s not what they’re doing.
No your purchasing habits. Market research firms used to pay good money for participation in buying studies. You had to give them your grocery receipts, and they paid you stipend every week for about six months.
Geez, that’s kind of personal, but what the hell. It was $70/week (delayed by 8 weeks) in 1975. Which of course was enough to encourage you to get stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily, for comparison.
