Database Illusions

July 26, 2005 10:14 PM

Does some database have the wrong idea about me? I live with 4 otherwise nice and "normal" guys who all drink a fair amount of beer, and I am the designated beer go getter. I almost always use my ATM/debit or credit card and grocery membership card.

Because the store is on my way, I pick up a 24 pack about every other day and my roomies reimburse me. Yesterday, standing in line, I got to wondering whether some database "thinks" that I go through that much alcohol myself and what the implications might be. Should I be concerned about this?

posted by tcy to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

I heard rumors of a story once where a man fell inside a grocery store, sued the company, and his purchase history was used against him in court. Sounds like an urban legend, now that I think about it, but the card does serve as a way of creating a better advertising campaign and understanding demographics and consumption habits.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:17 PM on July 26, 2005

Have all your friends procure grocery club cards, and switch them like crazy! Actually, this could make a great art project if documented well enough...hmmm
posted by hototogisu at 10:32 PM on July 26, 2005

That was no rumor. The man was Robert Rivera, and he tripped and fell in a Vons supermarket, shattering his kneecap. During negotiations, the supermarket threatened to try to use his purchasing history to show a pattern of alcohol use to imply that he was drunk at the time. Link: http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/10/14featureb.html

A good site for information about grocery store loyalty card privacy issues is http://www.nocards.org/news/supermarketnews.shtml.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:46 PM on July 26, 2005

Why on earth would you use your real name on a shopping card?

And if you're worried about being tracked, pay cash.
posted by Marky at 11:00 PM on July 26, 2005

If you're that paranoid about what's being recorded in the database, make copies of your discount card and give them to your roommates. That way, all the purchases they make on their own will get recorded to your account, as well as your own, and you will just look like one hell of an eclectic shopper.
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 12:15 AM on July 27, 2005

also, a lot of supermarkets don't check that the name and address you sign up with are your actual name and address, so you could sign up for a new card using fictitious information.
posted by clarahamster at 12:44 AM on July 27, 2005

I second the "pay cash" options. If you don't want you shopping habits to show up in some database, get the necessary money from the nearby ATM, and pay cash.
posted by XiBe at 2:42 AM on July 27, 2005

I use a grocery store loyalty card that I found in the street.
posted by rxrfrx at 7:04 AM on July 27, 2005

Why on earth would you use your real name on a shopping card?

The Wegmans near me checks your driver's license when you get one, can you believe that?
posted by phearlez at 7:54 AM on July 27, 2005

I was tangentially involved with a project that utilized grocery-club member data. My impression was that the amount of information collected was so overwhelmingly huge, it was nearly impossible to do anything with it on an individual level.

Grocery stores care a lot about tracking how much beer they sell per inventory period, and very little about how much you as an individual purchase. So far, the marketing gurus haven't figured out exactly how to make that individual information profitable (except in cases of multimillion dollar lawsuits), so it's not worth the hassle of mining it out.
posted by junkbox at 8:42 AM on July 27, 2005

I wonder about this sometimes, too. It seems easy to imagine that future computers will make some kind of leap in capacity that we can't imagine now. And with that, the ability to patch across lots of databases and crunch monster numbers with ease. Remember when 25K seemed like a huge file?

So anyway, if the databases are preserved long enough, there might be the capacity to search, stitch, and compute all of this info together so that you could generate profiles on the fly -- using purchases, log files, web posts, cell records, stuff that seems like noise now.

/paranoia filter
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:52 AM on July 27, 2005

I guess here's another question: is the club card some kind of credit card, or is it just a discount card? If it's just a discount card, it doesn't matter if you're paying cash or not, because they're still tracking the purchases when the card gets swiped for that discounted ginger ale you were eyeing...
posted by hototogisu at 12:13 PM on July 27, 2005

Grocery stores care a lot about tracking how much beer they sell per inventory period, and very little about how much you as an individual purchase. So far, the marketing gurus haven't figured out exactly how to make that individual information profitable (except in cases of multimillion dollar lawsuits), so it's not worth the hassle of mining it out.

If this is true, and it sounds reasonable, then is the only continued reason for these cards the added profit from people who don't have one buying something that would otherwise be on sale?

Though I tend to agree with _sirmissalot_ in that the data may be used in the future. I'm not exactly sure how my allowing an evil corporate entity to know that I like sandwiches will come back to haunt me, but whatever.
posted by trevyn at 12:23 PM on July 27, 2005

From a marketing perspective, the purpose of the cards is to build customer loyalty. Slashing the price of green beans by 40 cents a can isn't going to help your bottom line if people show up at your store, buy 12 cans of green beans, then drive down the road to your competitor to buy the rest of their groceries. You need customers to buy the discounted green beans, along with the high-margin items like diapers and paper towels. Loyalty programs are a way of saying, "We're going to give better prices to people who join our special program, and not the asshats who only want the cheap green beans."

Does it work? Yes and no. Stores hand their cards out like candy, and few do much in the way of "loyalty marketing" to people who join their programs. The bad side of things is that yes, your grocery store knows how much peanut butter you're buying. The (potentially) good side of things is that your grocery store can offer you special discounts on the products they know you buy most often (instead of free coupons for products you never buy) as a way of building loyalty between you and their store.

What you lose in privacy, you gain in personalized discounts. It's up to you whether you prefer to keep your peanut butter buying habits a secret, or get an extra $1.00 off coupon at the register.
posted by junkbox at 12:57 PM on July 28, 2005