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> it's a loyalty program calling something loyalty does not make it "loyalty" ..

gruez 2y ago
That's just the standard term for such programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program
- uoaei 2y ago
  It's the normal term, in that it has been normalized as such. But it is otherwise not accurate except in the barest, most monetaristically self-fulfilling-prophecy way.
dietr1ch 2y ago
So called loyalty programs should be illegal on multiple fronts, - Privacy: There's obvious tracking of purchasing trends. This derails into selling user data to everyone that makes people increasingly easy to track. - Customer-dependent pricing / Price-discrimination: This is awful for economy, in econ 101 you learn that business want to charge each customer as much as they are willing to pay, but this differentiated pricing is just getting their hands into everyone's pockets.The free market principles rely on perfect knowledge, and every step made to make pricing harder is an attack against self market regulation. Price discrimination is illegal even in Lobby-land, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/13 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/13
- barrkel 2y ago
  Price discrimination is not a priori bad. A fixed price with enough margin to support the business may be too high for price sensitive consumers. If you can charge more to less price sensitive consumers, you can, at the margin, make a little bit on these price sensitive consumers, and overall everyone is better off - more consumers are satisfied and their marginal willingness to consume a unit of the thing being sold is more equalized.
  - jkaplowitz 2y ago
    There are ways to adequately approximate that kind of price discrimination without detailed tracking though, like giving discounts to students, seniors, and people receiving various kinds of welfare benefit upon showing proof of status. Yeah it isn’t as accurate as the privacy-invasive kind of tracking, since students and seniors can be wealthy and eligibility for welfare benefits doesn’t always consider assets or gifts from well-off family. But it’s accurate enough to give the economy most of the same benefit without the privacy downside. I do think it’s fine for people to opt in to more tracking as a separate consent choice beyond merely participating in a loyalty program, for example to get more personalized and therefore more useful offers, but not as a condition of participation to merely receive at least standard offers and accumulate points. That’s how they generally work in Germany.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >I do think it’s fine for people to opt in to more tracking as a separate consent choice beyond merely participating in a loyalty program, for example to get more personalized and therefore more useful offers, but not as a condition of participation to merely receive at least standard offers and accumulate points. That’s how they generally work in Germany. Sounds like that'll push retailers to switch from a system where they give points/discounts to everyone, to one where points/discounts are "targeted", which of course requires opting into tracking. Like I said before, the whole premise of loyalty programs is that you're being tracked in exchange for rewards. You really can't expect to have your cake (discounts) and eat it too (not being tracked).
      - mistrial9 2y ago
        search term "green stamps" (edit)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&H_Green_Stamps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&H_Green_Stamps my grandmother collected green stamps from the grocery store, which she saved for food discounts.. I don't think that there was any customer ID involved at all.. honestly, describing pervasive tracking of purchasing associated with govt ID as "normal" is .. its a sickness and parts of it are illegal now. It is not required or "normal" at all, from this view

That's just the standard term for such programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program

uoaei 2y ago
It's the normal term, in that it has been normalized as such. But it is otherwise not accurate except in the barest, most monetaristically self-fulfilling-prophecy way.

dietr1ch 2y ago

So called loyalty programs should be illegal on multiple fronts, - Privacy: There's obvious tracking of purchasing trends. This derails into selling user data to everyone that makes people increasingly easy to track. - Customer-dependent pricing / Price-discrimination: This is awful for economy, in econ 101 you learn that business want to charge each customer as much as they are willing to pay, but this differentiated pricing is just getting their hands into everyone's pockets.The free market principles rely on perfect knowledge, and every step made to make pricing harder is an attack against self market regulation. Price discrimination is illegal even in Lobby-land, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/13 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/13

barrkel 2y ago
Price discrimination is not a priori bad. A fixed price with enough margin to support the business may be too high for price sensitive consumers. If you can charge more to less price sensitive consumers, you can, at the margin, make a little bit on these price sensitive consumers, and overall everyone is better off - more consumers are satisfied and their marginal willingness to consume a unit of the thing being sold is more equalized.
- jkaplowitz 2y ago
  There are ways to adequately approximate that kind of price discrimination without detailed tracking though, like giving discounts to students, seniors, and people receiving various kinds of welfare benefit upon showing proof of status. Yeah it isn’t as accurate as the privacy-invasive kind of tracking, since students and seniors can be wealthy and eligibility for welfare benefits doesn’t always consider assets or gifts from well-off family. But it’s accurate enough to give the economy most of the same benefit without the privacy downside. I do think it’s fine for people to opt in to more tracking as a separate consent choice beyond merely participating in a loyalty program, for example to get more personalized and therefore more useful offers, but not as a condition of participation to merely receive at least standard offers and accumulate points. That’s how they generally work in Germany.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >I do think it’s fine for people to opt in to more tracking as a separate consent choice beyond merely participating in a loyalty program, for example to get more personalized and therefore more useful offers, but not as a condition of participation to merely receive at least standard offers and accumulate points. That’s how they generally work in Germany. Sounds like that'll push retailers to switch from a system where they give points/discounts to everyone, to one where points/discounts are "targeted", which of course requires opting into tracking. Like I said before, the whole premise of loyalty programs is that you're being tracked in exchange for rewards. You really can't expect to have your cake (discounts) and eat it too (not being tracked).
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      search term "green stamps" (edit)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&H_Green_Stamps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&H_Green_Stamps my grandmother collected green stamps from the grocery store, which she saved for food discounts.. I don't think that there was any customer ID involved at all.. honestly, describing pervasive tracking of purchasing associated with govt ID as "normal" is .. its a sickness and parts of it are illegal now. It is not required or "normal" at all, from this view