Well, it’s been working extremely well for Costco for about 30 years…
Costco isn’t quite the same, because that is an actual honest to god membership card. You pay for it and it gives you access to the store.
That said, I’m not sure why these bulk resellers all need membership cards (is there some arcane law that doesn’t allow them to sell to the general public?) but it’s a staple throughout the industry from Sam’s Club to BJs.
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What amazes me about these programs is that you know who doesn’t have one: Walmart. Given Walmart’s savvy at this stuff, it leads me to believe that Kroger and the like are really not good at evaluating the costs versus the benefits of this, and are probably hurting themselves/driving away customers. Regardless of how much you hate Walmart, at least you don’t have to be in a special club to shop there.
How many sales does Kroger lose to people who go elsewhere, either because the don’t want the card, or forgot to carry it? How much higher would the sales have been on those occasions when a customer forgot their card? I know that on those times when I don’t have my card, I often end up getting the lower-priced non-marked-up product, or forgoing it entirely. Are these losses and the other admin costs really made up for by the proportion of customers who pay full price, the increased loyalty of some other costumers, and the secondary benefit of sales strategies derived by the tracking loyalty cards instead of receipts or credit cards? They are probably trading volume for margin, even though the loyalty cards are supposed to increase both. It is hard to know as an outsider the net benefit, but I am pretty convinced that Kroger doesn’t really know, and that Walmart thinks the it would be negative for them.
You can pry my LEGO store loyalty card from my cold, dead hands, dammit!
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I rather like the loyalty program when I buy beans at my preferred cafe: they keep track of my name and purchases on a piece of paper. When I’ve bought ten pounds they give me a free pound, throw out the piece of paper, and start again. [*]
[*] OK I lied, they use the address book app on an iPad, but they use it in a way that’s just the equivalent of what I wrote.
Also, to join with the stream of people ripping on Kroger: I won’t even set foot into the place any more because of BS such as others have described. As a bonus, the last time I shopped there the person-who-silences-the-beeping-self-checkout-machine-when-you-use-your-own-bag-or-something sternly told me I could have gotten In Big Trouble for using my own shopping bag instead of one of their baskets to shop, the insinuation being that I was behaving in a criminal manner. OK then Kroger! You go on my list of business that treat their customers like criminals.
Its called the “Managers” card at every place I have shopped. Its great because you opt out of being tracked and still get the discounts. The only downside is if they have points that accumulate that relate to real savings. I used to get a whole tank of gas at $2.00/gal once a month from shopping at stop and shop.
“I don’t have my card with me. My telephone number is (312) 867-5309. Thank you.”
Big Brother is Watching Jenny.
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Smart cashier if there’s incentive to build points on the card. Many cashiers have a ‘store card’ which I usually just assume is their personal card.
Depending on the way the particular loyalty card works, that’s a very good idea. You gain points for a significant number of purchases on the side, thereby saving yourself money on your own shopping. Your identity is also anonymised by the fact that many different people are using the same card. In China, we used to see people hanging around checkouts with their loyalty cards all the time asking if we could use their card to pay.
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Another thing to keep track of so someone can keep track of you. For all our pervasive fear of predators and being stalked, we seem to be ever more willing to be stalked by institutional predators, who can hide behind anonymity, weak laws, and opaque privacy policies, in return for us getting a lollipop. Is this what people want? To surrender our privacy for a few extra nickels? What’s even more irritating to me is that I have to opt-out every fucking time. It’s not like I can buy a product and be left alone, I have to be asked and asked and asked and asked, over and over again. Even if you don’t want to participate, you get asked why you don’t want to be showered with junk mail or promotions or coupons or added to their already extensive consumer databases. Isn’t it obvious that I want to be left alone, by not volunteering the card/tel in the first place? You think I would remember if I wanted to save a little bit of money? The constant aggressiveness is the most disturbing thing of all–it just feels like I’m being assaulted so that some VP can make their third quarter projections and get their bonus after screwing all the workers.
I confess that I’m tiring of the endless pieces telling me that some aspect of my viewing, buying, dressing, eating, or whatever life is a bad idea and implying that I’m too dim to realize it. So “chief explainer” Brian Palmer prefers a small wallet and dislikes loyalty programs. Maybe he also really really hates hoppy ales or network TV or plaid shirts. Why, I wonder, should I care about any of it? It’s not like there’s some hidden evil in loyalty programs, like carcinogens in one’s salad mix. It’s useful to put together a consumer-education piece outlining the perhaps-not-fully-appreciated back-end features of such programs (behavioral tracking, data-mining, and such), but the broad characterization of the programs as signs of bad service strikes me as silly–as does the “ditch your loyalty cards” suggestion.
If the delivery were amped up, it might have made a decent faux-Lewis-Black piece. As it stands, it’s just annoying.
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I suspected they were probably not a good business idea, but just to test it out for a while just in case, I tried out a stamp card system at my store. It didn’t cost me all that much to do and being a paper stamp card I didn’t have to invade on people’s privacy by collecting info on them or tracking what their buying habits. I wanted to try it as a way of legitimately offering a “good customer” discount without having to let some people know that they weren’t as “good” as they imagined they were or having anyone’s feelings hurt when they didn’t get it and a friend did and without me having to deal with a bunch of hassle to keep up with who meets the criteria to do it fairly. It didn’t encourage loyalty in the way I thought it would (folks had multiple cards from multiple stores and used mine when they were going to already shop with me anyway). I’ve noticed the same problem with a discount day of the week and individual sale items,too, that my customers who are wooed by sales are willing to be wooed by whatever day my competitor does theirs or whatever sale item my competitor has,too, so the sales don’t really build or reward loyalty. The folks lured by the sale alone only buy when I’m doing the discount or only buy the sale item, so it doesn’t make me money enough to be worth the added hassle.
The best way to build loyalty is to do it for real, to not only do like the article said and offer the best stuff and the good prices and good service, but to actually build real relationships with your best customers. If a customer is a regular and a money-maker for you, you do little extra things for them, you go the extra mile to make their experience easy or special.
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Well, let’s see… Whole Foods does have a loyalty card (for their food bar), and Trader Joe’s runs the occasional raffle or free groceries promo, so I think that basically unravels the entire point this article was trying to make.
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This feels like an article that’s 10 years out of date
Alongside all the ubiqutous, unauthorised and frankly sinister surveillance my life is subject to surely store loyalty cards are actually one fair and transparent example of information collection. If I trade a 1-2% reduction on my grocery bill (standard discount in the UK), the grocer gets to recognise who I was. A straightforward quid-pro-quo which I can opt in or out of.
The comparison to Albertsons “Getting to know [their] customers in neighborhoods," seems a little odd. After all my local shopkeeper who saw me every week would recognise me (by facial recognition), collect additional data from me (small-talk), and gradually build up a detailed profile of my lifestyle, habits and preferences (get to know me).
The relationship between an individual and a giant corporation may be unequal, but it’s still only fair that if we wish to, each of us should be able to know who we are transacting with. The grocers may not enforce this, but they do incentivise me to reveal myself either by convenience (paying by a non-anonymous means such as a credit card) or by a bribe of loyalty points.
We both also have rights to know and record the fact that we transacted and what that transaction was. Sensibly, what later happens to that data is covered by laws and regulation, and the contract between us.
In a world where the NSA has already read this and stuck it to my name, the choice to be anonymous is under threat or gone in finance, communication and other spheres and my movements are tracked most places I go this issue really is a red herring
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Man, you gotta stay away from Slate, then, which seems to take it as an editorial imperative to browbeat all its readers into an inferiority complex. Not only is its culture blog actually called “BrowBeat,” but its recipe blog calls itself You’re Doing It Wrong.
I guess they think they’re cute.
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There’s one big grocery chain I shop at occasionally, either for products where Whole Paycheck and Trader Joe’s doing have good equivalents, or for late-night shopping when the more interesting stores are closed. If you don’t bring your loyalty card with you, you can use the phone number you have registered with them. (AreaCode)-555-1212 works fine (though somebody else usually gets the coupons or gas price discounts, which is fine; I still get the basic discount.)
I resisted them all based on privacy concerns. Debit cards, credit cards, loyalty cards. I’ve now gone completely over in the other direction, for one simple reason: Poverty trumps privacy. We aren’t all that poor, really, but we sure would be if we bought our stuff at places that didn’t have crappy lighting and noisy doors.
I’d love to shop at a high-end place that doesn’t use loyalty cards - like Whole Foods. That would be great, they have good food and decent service. But there is no way I could do that and not go down a spiral of debt.
It’s all very well to be smug about privacy and advise people not to use loyalty cards. They do suck. But poverty sucks more.
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I’ve got a privacy version for one of my local chains (ie they come in packs of three or four and the cashier gave me one, someone else another, etc.). Back when people first started worrying about the datamining, there was a mini trend of trading yours with other people on a semi-regular rotation. I suspect having it tied to gas benefits is meant to cut down on some of that.
I’m so particular on where I get my gas (won’t buy Exxon because they’re still fighting the fines from the Exxon Valdez situation, won’t buy BP because they basically bought off the U.S. government to keep reporters out of the spill area in the gulf plus you know the gulf, and I forget why I don’t buy Shell but it’s something shitty like the above) that I could still trade mine around no problem. But not using one just results in shitty prices.
I went to Kroger today and my bill went down from like $86 to $65 or something. I didn’t get $21 off … I overpaid by $21 less than I would have. It’s great and wonderful to not care for loyalty cards. I wasn’t up for paying $21 extra today on principle.
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I use my Safeway card, and they give me digital coupons for stuff I already buy. I’m perfectly aware of how that works, and I’m okay with it. I’d rather them target me with coupons relevant to what I actually buy then have to wade through a bunch of junk food coupons.
I have never considered my groceries to be a private matter. Grocery shopping is probably the most public thing I do.
Now we know Jenny lives in Chicago 
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