the main point of loyalty cards was (and still is) data collection (which you've managed to work around) but they are also being used to help condition the public into accepting the idea that some people get (or even "deserve" to get) different prices than other people for the exact same items because of who or what they are.
Businesses always try to frame this as allowing them to offer "deals" to you, but honestly what they want is to raise prices just for you. They stand to make a killing on personalized dynamic pricing. It could massively inflate their profits (entirely at your expense) but what has been standing in their way so far is that consumers find personalized pricing to be invasive, unfair, and discriminatory. Businesses are working very hard to get the public to accept personalized pricing though and loyalty cards/programs are seen as a way to help that.
Unless you like being ripped off and being taken advantage of, try to resist and push back against personalized pricing when you see it.
As someone who worked at Kroger ~10 years ago, even then credit cards were probably only 60-70% of payments. A lot of cash and checks. The loyalty programs had their start when it wasn’t quite so easy to track purely via payment. Also helps to connect a person with a definite address to mail brochures/coupons to, and to link accounts when someone changes credit card numbers, etc.
> credit cards were probably only 60-70% of payments
Do you think it's still that way today? I really have no idea. I worked grocery 20 years ago and remember being amazed how many people pay cash. I can't remember the last time I've seen someone pay with a check at the grocery. I see cash here and there, but mostly credit or tap. But I have no idea what the breakdown would be.
I don't see how they would be considered "unfair competition" under any meaningful definition of "unfair competition" (ie. something that isn't just "bad for consumers"). It costs nothing to sign up for loyalty programs, and being in a loyalty program doesn't hinder your ability to comparison shop or go to the store with the best deals. Yes, it does require you to jump through hoops to get the best price and is effectively price discrimination, but I don't see how it's any different than other forms of price discrimination (eg. having rotating specials so you're forced to plan ahead and/or stock up).
It would probably be a stretch and overreach, but the angle I would take is that they are competing not on the merit of their products.
Consider airline miles. Each time I purchase a ticket, instead of choosing the best deal (fair competition), I am incentivized to choose an airline I have chosen in the past so as not to fragment my points across several accounts. And of course, these "rewards" are all a price passed on to the consumer.
I have been buying flights for 20 years and not once has that crossed my mind.
It goes:
Number of stops -> arrival/departure time -> layover time -> cost.
I also feel like I only ever have 1 nonstop flight option, maybe 2. Maybe the biggest airports have sufficiently redundant flights, but even then, surely most people know points are worth 1% at most, and in my experience, flight prices differ by hundreds.
I would be confused if I learned people were buying flights based on points/miles. I assume the miles/points are mainly utilized by very frequent travelers, or people using credit card rewards.
For anyone not getting the cultural reference, it's due to a 40 year old pop song that used that phone number (as one belonging to a Jenny to be called "for a good time").
In the overwhelming majority of US television and movies, onscreen phone numbers are of the form 555-xxxx to prevent clashes with those telecoms actually hand out. However, numbers of the form 867-xxxx are perfectly valid; and when Brown University made the mistake of handing out 867-5309 to an unfortunate dorm room around 1999 or so, those people were deluged with phone calls asking for Jenny.
Hate to break it you, but that particular Mike Jones (who?) masterwork is nearing voting age.
Mr Jones also included the area code, didn’t repeat the number in the chorus, and didn’t put it in the song title; and “Back Then” also wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous.
That's a 415 area code number, and because Jenny has lived in Marin County the entire time (since 1981) she has never suffered an area code change like many in the Bay Area have over the years. ;)
I wonder if some stores flag it. I've used it a lot with success, but once in a Walgreens they asked me for the name on the loyalty account after I punched it in.
> I think the parent comment was talking about a loyalty card discount at a supermarket
They are & so is the parent of your post. In the US, it's common for supermarket cashiers to lookup loyalty cards by the customer's phone number. The comment you replied to is saying that the phone number <area-code>-867-5309 is almost always tied to an existing loyalty card. Lots of people just give that phone number if they want the discounts without signing up.
Why should they give you a "deal" that they do at a loss or near-loss if you aren't willing to sacrifice the necessary currency for it?
Allowing people who don't care about their privacy to sell it seems like a fair transaction. Sabotaging capitalism & markets by not allowing consumers and producers to engage in barter seems inadvisable.
I personally care about my privacy, so I choose not to use overbearing services. I don't think that I should rob others of the ability to trade their privacy for better deals.
I see it as a dodge around unit pricing. Every price has the price per item and the price per 100ml/100g/whatever is appropriate. It's the law that applies to all shops that aren't small.
Easy to compare, until you come to the discounted prices which don't have unit prices printed. They can be multi buys, Clubcard offers, bundles, or whatever.
No. By allowing the practice, people who are okay with being stalked get compensated for their value. People who don't consent to the transaction in question are not a party to it, and are not being taxed; they're paying the regular price.
No. The "regular" price is whatever people not opting into stalking are paying. Capitalism is based around supply and demand, and people who don't want to be stalked are willing to pay more. That's not an upcharge. That's the default price.
Part of the deal everyone's living under is that we live under a system of rough supply and demand. Selling something for what people will pay for it is not a shell game, it's basic economics. The price for people who choose not to be stalked is the default price.
When pretty much no one pays the ‘default’ price it loses relevance.
In fact, when almost everyone pays the ‘stalking’ price, even when they obviously don’t want to be stalked and go out of their way to screw with the program and attempt to stop the stalking, your comment seems to completely ignores actual reality, which is heavily influenced by marketing, social pressures, price pressures, etc?
You know, actual market forces in a capitalist environment?
A shell game is one where misdirection is used to point someone towards an option which benefits the person running the game if the other player chooses it, by hiding the actual choice they want through confusion and obfuscation.
Seems like a perfectly appropriate description here?
> Allowing people who don't care about their privacy to sell it seems
like a fair transaction. Sabotaging capitalism & markets by not
allowing consumers and producers to engage in barter seems
inadvisable.
This seems intuitively free and fair, but the same sentiment is the
centrepiece of John Stuart Mill's (problematic but fascinating)
examination of Harm Principle and limits of personal liberty.
Namely; not being able to sell yourself into slavery.
Ordinary people (in the technological age) are not really capable of
understanding or valuing their privacy and weighting the consequences
of trading it. For the same reason we don't allow children to enter
contracts I think it could fairly be said the average adult doesn't
have capacity to "trade their privacy".
