Loyalty Kills – Supermarkets Using Cards To Destroy Local Shops
IT may look rather harmless, but to the small local retailer the supermarket loyalty card could be as dangerous as an army of shoplifters.
According to the Telegraph, supermarkets have been accused of using information taken from customer loyalty cards to identify where they have customers without a local store.
At a Commons Home Affairs select committee hearing into the rise of a ‘surveillance society’ in Britain, former Labour minister John Denham expressed his fear that the information on the loyalty cards was being used in an underhand and negative way by the supermarket giants. Says he: “I may want to shop at a supermarket but I may also want to keep my local district shopping centre. But it’s not being explained to people that this information could be used to put the local shopping centre out of business.”
Loyalty Management Group, which operates Sainsbury’s Nectar card, admitted that the supermarket chain could access data such as where its customers lived and where and when they shopped from the loyalty cards.
However, Tesco’s legal services manager tells MP’s, “The information is used primarily for the benefit of customers but I cannot give you great detail about how our insight teams may use it.”
How very helpful.
Posted: 9th, June 2007 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
