Yes, but with the card, we can automaticly track your shopping history and reward you for being a loyal customer. If you spend $600 a month on groceries, your grocer is going to want to reward your loyalty a lot more then someone who was just in the neigborhood and stopped in to buy a six-pack. The only way to do this is with membership cards, key-tags, thumb-prints, or retina-scans.
A lot of the promotions that our retailers run can get very complex. Some will track the amount of money you spend in just the meat department, and once you reach a certain level you are rewarded with a coupon for a free ham, or turkey.
We also have a points program available where the retailer can give points and the shopper can redeem them for gifts from a catalog or for products in the store.
Oh, we track all that too. But it’s not nearly as useful to the grocer’s marketing program.
When my company’s system goes into a store, we can raise the store’s sales by 10% to 20% within the first three months. This will usually increase the store’s profit margin by at least 1%, which in the supermarket industry, is HUGE.
Thanks for the info, Voltaire. Very interesting. That leads me to another question then. What does Albertsons hope to gain by eliminating the use of customer cards since their “marriage” to Lucky? If there’s really such a benefit in increased profits because of them, wouldn’t Albertsons be shooting themselves in the foot in the long run?
And BTW, in all my years of using those cards, I can’t recall ever getting any kind of special coupon either sent to me or given to me at the store because of my past purchases. Ever. The only coupons I’ve ever received were the ones that come on the back of the receipt, for products similar to ones I’d purchased, but never the same brands. (I bought Purina Cat Chow, the coupon was for Meow Mix, etc.)
“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” – Lily Tomlin
That reminds me, there was this one Gibson book (damn! what was it called… Idoru?) where the guy’s job is to track and figure stuff out about people by what they buy, and what they watch on TV and stuff. It was cool. He had some special talent where he’d get vibes about people from all this stuff, and he’d build their mind and life from the ground up, based only on that information. Maybe they have people doing that to us right now! Thank God I don’t have a Shopper’s Club card. Who knows what they’d find out about me?
Makes you wonder, don’t it?
The answer to both your questions is the same. Albertsons and whatever store you shop at have the wrong system. There are a few companies out there that rely on tricking the retailer into thinking they have a lot more capabilities then they actually do. Most of my company’s new customers are stores that had a previous “frequent shopper” program that didn’t live up to the promises made at the time of the sale. It is a tremendously complex business to get into, as it requires the collection of vast amounts of data and the ability to make good use of it. Not to mention the ability to reliably tie into existing point-of-sale hardware in the store. We also provide credit, debit, check, and EBT payment processing systems on top of all that.
Most of the supermarket data is warehoused by a few huge “marketing” companies around the country. I try to confuse them, especially when I find a card in the parking lot and start using it.Another fun thing to do is grocery card bingo. Get everyone at a party to put their card in a hat and everybody gets a new one before they leave. I usually shop at Aldi anyhow and they don’t have cards but they have better prices than anyone.
One of our grocery stores has a card system, too. Lately I’ve noticed that if you don’t hand a card to the cashier then the cashier scans one of theirs.
If you’re worried about privacy, there’s usually nothing to prevent you from falsifying your information when you sign up for a card. If the card includes check-cashing, the store will ask for other ID, but if it’s just to receive discounts you can probably misspell your name, give a false address, switch cards with a friend, etc. all you want. Maybe you miss out on the promotional mailings, but you still get the in-store discounts, while throwing Big Brother a nice curve.
Recently the local Dominick’s started printing my name out on my receipt. Sometimes the cashier has looked at it to personally tell me to have a nice day. This is one “courtesy” I don’t really need.
Well, you wouldn’t really want to do that if you were a member of one of the stores that my company provides a frequent shopper program for. The reason is that you accumulate points in your account based on your purchases. You can get bonus points for buying specific items and also points per dollar spent. The points are later redeemed for gifts, or for products in the store. There are also promotions that run over time that track your spending in a specific department and reward you for it. Actually, there’s more types of promotion that I could begin to name here, as my company has the ability to create completely custom promotions based on any of the data from the transaction.
Usually stores will also have a birthday promo which triggers on the week of the customer’s birthday and give them a coupon for a free item, or a free gift, or a large block of points.
So, I don’t know what kind of card program you’re in at your grocery store, but they’re not all that bad. As I’ve said, its all about giving the most loyal shoppers the best rewards.
I just got my $25 certificate to use for a deli, fruit, or seafood tray (got one last year also). I’ve also gotten several invitations to cooking classes that are for their “best customers only.”
thank you for the reassuring answers. I know some folks who think its the beginning of the mark of the beast!
“Worship satan and get $2.99 off your next purchase!”
One point of view is that people are already making money selling your personal data. At least here, you get some benefit also.
One benefit for the stores I’ve heard of is that if they have low-profit products, but the people who buy them also buy other, high-profit products at the same time, the stores know to keep the low-profit products around, for the indirect benefit. Even if they buy them in different trips, you don’t want your profitable customers getting used to going to another store. You can’t tell this kind of information just from total sales.
Exactly. Those are called “loss leaders” and the practice is very common in any grocery store you go to. In fact, they aren’t just “low-profit” items, often the store actually sells them for less then their price. These are usually common items such as bread, water, bleach, or milk. Different stores use different items, but often competing stores will try to undercut each others loss leaders.
NonTarheel – when I first signed up for a card at Safeway I was issued a temporary one, then given a plastic one the next time I came in by them switching the info at the checkout line. They obviously didn’t do something right because my name doesn’t print out on the receipt; the checker always looks for it and resignedly says: “Have a good day, uh, Ma’am.” However, if I forget my card and use my phone #, my name does print up on the card, so they do have my info on an account somewhere, but I don’t think it’s on the card I actually use. I’m guessing there’s some way to get your name taken off, or maybe you could say you moved and need to re-fill out your card info and put a bogus name on it. It might be fun to make them say “Have a nice day, Mrs. Jacob-Jingleheimer-Schmidtt!” I still qualify for the point based awards they give you at the checkout, but if there’s anything I’m supposed to be getting in the mail, I’m not getting it.
