I signed up for the local grocery store savings card the other day. Those things make me laugh. I remember when they first started coming out and people didn't understand why you had to have a card to save. They didn't get why if they're giving out membership for free and they're willing to give the discount that they wouldn't just give the discount and forget about making people carry a silly card. You can get a discount card almost anywhere now. I think whoever thought those things up is brilliant. Nevermind that maybe people will shop at the store more often because that's the card they have. That seems more like an afterthought to me. The real value there for the stores is for the analysts. They can keep track of peoples shopping habits, which is gold for a store. Just think about how much information they can deduce from those records. They know what you buy, how often, when you splurge, what brands you tend toward and more. They can tailor specials to specific regions based on those buying trends. If they find that most consumers are buying milk once a week on the weekends, they might put milk on sale just shy of a week so that people buy it sooner (and probably waste some of it because they don't need the milk yet so some of it may go bad, in which case they'll be back at the store buying more). They could also have big sales on days of the week the store is historically slow to ease the pressure off of the busier days, thereby possibly reducing the amount of staff needed on hand, which increases their bottom line. I wasn't kidding when I said before that I analyze everything.
On the same line of reasoning here, think about GPS units for cars. I know I'm going to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but I'm really not. I happen to use GPS in my car, so it's not like I'm afraid of The Man or something. Think of the information they could gather from those things. How fast you drive, where you drive, when you drive and more. How long before everyone has GPS in their car and we start getting speeding tickets in our email inbox? I'm just saying. Soon the whole world will be trackable. Woohoo!
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4 comments:
Wicked conspiracy theory there. Sure some of it is probably true, but really, who has time to track all that info. Oh wait, the government would just set up a committee and increase our taxes to pay for it. Wait, i'm getting political here... It's true though.
one time I told amy at work why stores have those stupid cards and she thought I was wacko. All I'm doing here is pointing out what they CAN do with the technology that we consume. I'd better be careful here, before I turn into one of those nuts in the woods that creates a gov't free bubble.
The store cards are "big brother" because the stores use computers to track results plenty fast. The worrisome part is what the store does with the info over and above what they use it for. Do they sell the info or give it away. The GPS is not a bother to me because they are not tracked yet. When they do, you just pick the unit that does not use your info. Cell phones can be a worry. Most new phones have GPS built in and the ability to shut down the GPS so it only is activated during 911 calls. It should be an option in the cell
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actually, most digital cameras now have gps built in. I thought that cameras should have it so that when you download the pictures it also records where you took it so you can remember - I looked into it and it turns out they've already started putting GPS in, but they haven't really started using it to their advangtage yet
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