This chapter was jam packed full of good information but my favorite two sections that I want to discuss further are Love Me, Love My Purchases and Taking Direction Against Direct Marketing.
The points that Garfinkel makes in Love Me , Love My Purchases are quiet interesting. He talks about how watching the behavior of customers by tracking their transactions using customer cards can be used to increase sales and by what mechanism sales can be increased by. An example mentioned would be whether a 10 cents or 50 cent coupon triggers more coupon sales. They also use this technology and information to distinguish more profitable customers from less and give more perks to more profitable customers.
A great example of this today is the very popular CVS card. From personally having this customer rewards card, I think it is the best free customer card service compared with others in business. The CVS card gives actual CVS dollars back for purchase in store. However, I usually only buy milk and stuff on clearance there and while they started out giving me large rewards such as 3 dollar coupons once a month, they have now withdrawn to dollar and $10 off a purchase of $50 or more. (However recently I did work the system when getting a $17 antibiotic prescription and had a coupon for a $25 gift card with transfer of a prescription, talk about a good deal). I do know some people who really benefit from the CVS card but they usually have prescriptions at CVS and are definitely the best customers for the business.
As for Taking Direction Against Direct Marketing, I think Garfinkel paints a possible view of the future with all the different and new forms of junk advertising that will be available by using databases and other forms of IT. However, I think after a while people will be desensitized to it as the individual he portrays seems to be very offended by all the marketing. Out of the four alternatives to taking direction against direct marketing I think alternatives 2 and 4 are the most realistic. Mostly because society responds well to public opinion and legal coverage. Which do yall think were the best?
3 comments:
The data collected on all of our transactions is invaluable to these companies. They try and obtain as much as possible and seem to go to the extreme sometimes. I think that if we didn't have any regulation for such practies they would take it even further. Many of us don't even know when or what types of information these computer databases have about us. It would be interesting to see what they have on all of us.
Information is knowledge. That is why people are willing to spend countless dollars on demographic information and purchasing habits. It enables them to do so much more than they would have been able to do previously. Think about it this way, every purchase you make with a card or check is registered and filed away in a database. This database is available to anyone who wants it, for a price. So anyone with money can see exactly what you have purchased and market to you exactly that way.
I am the one who is not offended because I am desensitized to marketing efforts. After throwing away so many pieces of mail and deleting email, it is expected that I will have to waste some of my time everyday to purge this marketing information (papa john's does make me want to buy a pizza every once in a while though ;).
The frequent customer cards kinda crack me up because I don't carry them on me, yet everytime I go into Albertson's and I don't have it, they cashier always scans a generic one behind the counter...and poof, I get the same discount as the person before me who got all of their purchases tracked.
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