[clue-talk] national ID card

[Nate Duehr]

On Jul 1, 2007, at 11:14 AM, erik at ezolan.com wrote:

> Also an interesting note, Albertsons has stopped using the  
> membership card.

Even more interesting:  Only in Colorado -- according to the checker  
I asked about it yesterday.  She said if you travel out of state and  
shop at Albertson's there, they're still using them.

My dad and I were discussing this last night over BBQ... our theory  
is that the wimpy position of Albertson's in the Colorado marketplace  
(far behind Kroger/King Soopers, Safeway, Wal-Mart, etc etc etc) and  
the fact that people really just want to shop by price, especially  
for commodity goods, made them think hard about how to gain market  
share.  This pushed them to dropping the membership card here as a  
(good) gimick to draw in customers who didn't like them from the  
other major chains.

So in a twisted way, they probably don't care about our "privacy" but  
they do care about money... and market share... and it's proof  
perhaps that the chains to go after on privacy issues aren't the big  
ones, with negativity... but to tout the "dropping the membership  
card" tactic to merchants lower down the food chain (no pun intended,  
but as I typed it I thought it was funny), as a way to gain customers.

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com