Todd Franz

You’ve just finished your day at work, arrive home and check the mailbox. Today is your day for all of the local supermarket advertisements to occupying each square inch of the mailbox. You cannot help but rummage through the ads to see what kind of “deal” you can get with your customer loyalty card or “cards”.

You know the deals I’m talking about. “Buy One Get One Free” or “10 for $10”. Of course you feel empowered because you notice that these offers are “only” extended to the holders of “Customer Loyalty Cards” or the like. But are you really getting a deal?

You begin your shopping journey and load up on all the great “deals” and push your over capacity shopping cart to the register. Ahead of you in line you notice a customer who does not have a “loyalty” card. The cashier kindly informs the customer that they need to fill out the brief application so they can issue them a card on the spot.

Ever so willingly, the customer completes the application, the “bar code” on the “loyalty” card is scanned, the big savings is shown on the cash register display, the transaction is completed, and another “loyal” customer has been acquired. Really?

No not really. Did you ever stop and wonder why all of you personal information is needed on the application? It is requested so that the supermarket can track your purchasing history to identify your trends in purchasing so that they create future marketing strategies.

Studies have shown that retailers have the ability to inflate prices on their products based upon their acquisition price. Retail price is inflated on one end of the computer software, and a “savings” amount is generated on the other, which later totals out to be “your savings”. Is that really true? No. Further studies have shown that loyalty card carriers actually spend more money at their favorite grocery store to which they are “loyal”.

Buyer beware. We all want to save money, but in reality, our conservative approach to saving money may prove to be our biggest expense, our privacy. I wonder what would happen if we loaded the grocery cart beyond capacity , did not have a loyalty card, but requested to receive the same price as the guy or gal with the card. Do you have to complete the transaction if they try to force the loyalty card on your reluctant intuition? Sounds like it would be a loss to the retailer, not you the consumer. So now who is really the “loyal” party in this situation?

Do you have loyalty cards? Think you spend more at those stores?

Photograph Credit:
Sabrina Segal