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Comment by dfxm12 | Hacker News Reader

Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no?

ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program

Not necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price.

A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price tags and customer tracking you could show different prices to different customers in-person. For example, when Alice goes to the eggs it could say $2 and when Bob goes to the eggs it could say $4. Then you just need to track the customer to the register to make sure you give them the price that was displayed. I believe the amazon "go" stores were doing the whole customer tracking thing so we already have the necessary tech demonstrated in real stores.

>Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price.

This is already happening at Lidl. I was standing in line one day and the lady in front of me asked if I had the app, because there was something like a $5 off $50 purchase coupon in there I could use. I did have the app and checked, but my coupon instead was for $15 off $150.

Thinking a little more deeply about it, every time I go there I tend to spend an average of around $125. My hypothesis is that they have that data and know a customer's average spend, so they tailor the coupon's dollar amounts to the customer to entice them to spend slightly more than they usually do.

"The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs"."

This already happens. We've been getting personalized coupons from our local store for 15+ years now.

FYI, I specifically mentioned Aldi because they don't have loyalty cards. I understand that might not have been clear to everyone, so I'll edit my comment to make it clear.

Ah, yeah I don't have an Aldi near me so I didn't know that. Regardless, the same approach could be applied via emailing coupons with barcodes to scan at the register. It'd just be less convenient for the customer than having it automatically applied via a loyalty card.

The store we usually shop puts out weekly loyalty coupons via email. Sometimes it's a free pint of ice cream. Other times it might be $5 off $20 of spend, etc. To my knowledge they aren't targeting these specials to specific groups because the cashiers always mention them before we even see them appear. It's possible their screen is giving them additional info that isn't mirrored to the screen we see though.

i really doubt the downsides of adding that layer of complexity can compete with the upsides of surveillance pricing.

My mainstream supermarket in Nordics has for the longest time given individual coupons in their loyalty program.

There are three tiers of discount. There are general special offers, advertised widely, to get people through the door. Then there are members only discounts, advertised in store, to get people to be members. Then there are mailed to members personal discounts that are uncannily accurate for what is running out to get you to go shopping now instead of later. These days the hand scanners and apps also tell you what coupons you have so you don’t need mail but junk mail is still regular.

TBH as a shopper it works great.

Sometimes, you may not have an Aldi near you. Also, many people may not have the luxury of going to grocery stores because they have to work in an office for 8–9 hours.

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