Tell HN: The Grocery Store is Watching You (and it's brilliant)
> It's one thing if I trade my personal sales habits to a grocery store chain in exchange for a percentage off the final sale. That's a choice I'm making, consciously and knowingly. (By this point, if you haven't figured that out, you're just deliberately hiding from the fact.)
I just did some thinking on the discount cards that are common at grocery stores, at least in America and England (not sure about elsewhere). It doesn't just track your personal shopping history, it also tracks when you buy things on sale - so they can see who exactly changes goods to a more premium version at what discounts, etc. Really brilliant stuff - when you offer "premium cookies" at $2 off, do people add them that wouldn't otherwise? Do they drop the cheap, normal cookies in favor of premium? Do premium buyers stock up, then buy less next time?
With some good analytics/datamining/statistically minded people, a grocery could make some intelligent guesses on how gross and net profit would change by offering sales. Maybe they'd even see that offering a certain discount on only one day of the week would do well! Wow...
Quote really got me thinking, wanted to share my thoughts with the rest of us here. I know the Tell HN isn't standard operating procedure, but I was totally intrigued and felt compelled to share this.