I don’t think they really care what you, personally, buy or don’t buy. My supermarket sends emails listing weekly specials and I think they do want to know if people buy that can of peaches after it was mentioned in one of those emails. They may even try changing the offer in the email, so some people get a ten-percent discount while others get a fifteen-percent discount. Or perhaps they change the text or photo of the can, and then can see how people respond differently.
I mean, what are they getting out of it? I’m sure that marketing wonks really need to know the correlation between old El Paso mild salsa verde and Hidden Valley Ranch Bacon Chipotle vegetable dippers in an 8-pack of individual servings, in Clarkesville versus Huntington. Is that worth an extra 10 cents off broccoli? Sure, why not.
But I did accidentally scan my Kroger card at Jewel once and it worked, so maybe it is a grand cabal? 
But they still know whether the can was bought even without tracking me - it would be a pretty sorry store that didn’t know what it had sold and what was still on the shelves.
Mind you, this is all presuming they track anything at all. They may not be - the original purpose of a loyalty program was to encourage people to come back and shop more at the same store rather than buy their peaches somewhere else next time. (Hence the name - loyalty.)
Yes, they know that a can of peaches was purchased, but with a loyalty card, the supermarket can tell if customers bought the products mentioned in the weekly email, or the flyer sent to their homes.
A lot of it is trying to get you to buy more expensive items or spend more money. I worked from Kroger some time ago. I remember one of the strategies was if you spent an average of say $60 on your grocery trips. They’ll start sending you coupons for "
Spend $70, get $5 off" or something like that. Eventually you’ll get so used to getting $70 worth of groceries that you’ll keep doing it even when you don’t have the coupon. An then come the “spend $80” coupons…
Regarding the idea of loyalty cards and marketing aimed at particular customers, there is the famous story of how Target Stores sent custom advertising to women who they predicted were pregnant.
The Safeways around here (everywhere?) give you 10 cents off a gallon of gas for every $xx spent. We don’t buy gas anymore, but we would frequently get 50 cents or $1.00 (the max) off per gallon when we filled up. That kept us “loyal.”
The manager I spoke to seemed rather stressed about the change situation and the lunch time rush. He sent my friend back with 270 in bills. I don’t know how long that will last, from what I’ve been reading online, its just a pittance for most fast food places.
It will help. Even if it’s not a lot from the perspective of the business, it will still help.
krogers owned jewel for almost a decade or more …
is it the same story i heard an interview with a guy who was writing a book on advertising where they did that and a dad came in and almost started a fistfight with managers who called the police and everything cause they sent a "congratulations we have everything you need for your baby " coupon book to a 16-year-old girl saying they were saying his daughter was a tramp and they promoted teens getting knocked up and such …
he calmed down and came back a couple of days later he came back apologized to everyone in the store because come to find out yes his daughter was 4 months along and he had no clue about it …
but Yeah, jackasses on Facebook are already saying the coin thing is fake news and other such bs …
There are also instances where women get pregnant, lose the baby, yet still continue to receive coupons/offers for pregnancy stuff, then newborn infant stuff… For some, it is quite painful.
It might help more than I thought. My friend was most impressed with the deal, so took her change jar to KFC and got a gift card and free food from them. She has 3 adult children with their own change jars who also want gift cards and free food. I’m pretty sure the children have friends with change jars…
If this snowballs, Prescott Valley fast food places might be able to make it through the drought without too much suffering.
Today we were encouraging the cashiers to ask customers for coin. Most didn’t have much, but a few did and were happy to exchange it for groceries. One lady had almost $7 in change. Might have finished my day with slightly more change than I started.
Also, since I’m in the cash office tomorrow I told an employee it was OK to bring in her estimated $50 in change, I’ll count it even if the service desk balks at the task and we can do it through their tills. It’s not much in one sense, but it can extend our supply of coin a little bit further so we can continue to provide change to those who need it.
It’s gotten so bad around here that my local Del Taco just posted a sign on the drive-thru speaker that limited all sales to either exact change or electronic payment. Seems they got tired of yahoos ordering a $.79 taco and paying with a $20. Works for me - I’ve been paying out of my change jar there for weeks.
It’s official - we ended the day yesterday with more in change than what we started with. Not much more, to be sure, but anything past breaking even is a good thing right now.
There were a few errors in counting up all that change, but it amounted to less than $2 for a couple hundred in coins, about a 1% error rate which we can live with. It was somewhat compensated for by a few customers saying “keep the change”.
We also got a coin delivery today. It will also help, although it may be the only coin delivery we get until next week. I think we’ll be able to eke out the supply until then.
Keeping track of all the non-standard stuff and sending off e-mails to corporate probably took up 40 minutes of my day, but that’s life in the age of covid - aggravation, stuff takes longer, and many many work-arounds because life just ain’t normal.