I have to wonder how much benefit you're really getting from that coupon program if everybody is getting them. At grocery stores you basically have to use a clu

I have to wonder how much benefit you're really getting from that coupon program if everybody is getting them. At grocery stores you basically have to use a club card to get the same prices you could have gotten if the store didn't have a club card. If you're an early adopter you can get good deals for a while, but as the number of customers in the program approaches critical mass, the benefit to each customer from having volunteered their information diminishes, and by then the Nash equilibrium is for everybody to be in the program. There's probably a name for this situation but I've forgotten it. It's like an inside-out race to the bottom. And if stores can track you just as easily through credit cards, then I wonder how long it will be until Target offers discounts for using credit cards instead of cash, if that's legal. (Also, you could be getting those coupons because you don't buy that laundry detergent as much as you could; if you bought it much more frequently they might guess that they couldn't get your purchase volume up much further by dropping the price.)