Text 29882, 72 rader
Skriven 2009-10-15 08:09:32 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DALE SHIPP
Ärende: Re: giant things 264
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DSh> They claim that
DSh> they will be offering specials to "load onto the card", but 
DSh> I have no idea how that will work.

ML> They could actually have memory on the card, which I doubt, or

DSh> I also doubt that, other than the permanently encoded mag strip on the
DSh> card.

ML> they could associate particular deals with particular card

DSh> Perhaps.

That's how they do it.  Royal Ahold maintains a database of card
numbers and purchases associated with those numbers.  As you use your
card in the store, your purchases are recorded in the database, and
as you already noted, they use that info to offer sale prices on other
items (sometimes sponsored) that you might be convinced to purchase.

This is especially true with their Scan-It program - the hand-held 
scanner chimes and lights up with "special offers" on items I've
bought in the past, or might want to buy based on my previous 
purchases.  Say, for example, I have a history of buying Pedigree
canned food for Zim at Stop & Shop.  Next time I use the scanner,
an offer might pop up on the screen.  It could be from Pedigree,
offering me a free can of dog food when I buy two as a "thank you"
for buying Pedigree all the time.  Or it could be from Alpo,
offering me 50c off on cans of Alpo to try and lure me away from
my usual Pedigree purchase (that's the kind of "sponsored" special
offer I'm talking about.)

DSh> It is my belief that they have used the cards to track purchases for
DSh> some time.  They gather the data, both personalized and generalized
for
DSh> data mining for helping their market "serve the customer better" which
DSh> is business speak for "increase our profits by inticing the customer
to
DSh> buy more".   I know that some personal info on purchases is saved
DSh> because they have things like "buy six gallons milk and the seventh
DSh> gallon is free".  Each time you check out, the slip shows how many
DSh> gallons you have bought.

You are correct.  Way before they started offering specials on the 
Scan-It etc. they would offer point-of-sale coupons at the register
which vary from person to person based on what the cashier was
ringing out.  The newer database capabilities take that somewhat 
further.

There is a certain measure of privacy, though.  From what I understand,
your purchases are not directly linked to your name/address/etc. but
rather to your cards, which is then linked in a separate database to
your name.  It sounds like a minor distinction, but it's actually kind
of cool to know that although the store might sell its marketing data
to industry analysts or advertisers, it's only the data and not the
names associated with it that get sold. (So, for example, an advertiser
might know that 50 people in zip code 06025 bought pork loins last 
month, but they can't actually call up those 50 people and asked them
how delicious their pork loin was because they don't have the names or
phone numbers associated with the data.)



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