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Comment by geremiiah | Hacker News Reader

Is this why grocery stores are so keen to get you to use their coupon app or hand them your phone number? I always refuse, but I always wondered what they do with the data.

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The amount of "discount" is so much that they must be getting a large income stream from the data. Whenever I see something where the shelf sticker claims a lower price for "digital coupon" (meaning: use their app), I put the item back onto the shelf and move on. I'm willing to use the loyalty cards, but I am not willing to allow the sort of surveillance data that phone apps provide.

Margins on items at grocery stores is pretty thin. For them to be able to offer 50¢ or $1 off for items by using their app, that tells me that they are making more than that much from the data about me. My suspicion is that they're earning at least 10x that much from the data.

The dirty secret is there is no income stream from the app, and the data they recover isn't worth much.

What it is is that the people who are price-conscious will clip the coupons and use the loyalty - those who are not will not.

Yup, it's that simple. And effective. As I was raised pretty poor by most people's standards, I can't help but jump through whatever annoying hoops to save a buck. But there are a lot of well-off people who would find it kind of taboo to essentially digitally "clip coupons."

Yes, unfortunately as an example to the problem here my grocery store charges around 20-30% more for the privilege of not using the app. Eventually I relented because I needed the 'savings' and it was the only grocery store available to me.

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