Open up your wallet and lay all your cards out on a table. Chances are, loyalty cards will make up at least some of your collection, if they don’t already exist on your phone in the form of apps. Loyalty cards are everywhere – name a big retail company and they are more than likely to provide this customer service, offering benefits and rewards to shoppers who return to consume, week in, week out.
At first glance, what’s not to like? The odd restaurant voucher here and family day out there just for shopping at Tesco or Boots; they’re practically giving me free stuff just for going to my usual stores! But the real truth is that the operation works far more to the advantage of the companies than the millions of unassuming customers.
Loyalty cards began their journey towards becoming a mainstay of the consumer lifestyle in 1995, when Tesco launched its ‘Clubcard’. While most other major retailers followed suit, Tesco remains the archetype for the loyalty card model, with an estimated 19 million customers being members of the scheme as of 2021. More recently, too, the Clubcard benefits were extended from a variety of vouchers to actual in-store discounts, making joining this not-so-exclusive club almost irresistible; it seems you’re actively overspending if you don’t get on board. But what’s in it for Tesco, and all the other companies, other than your so-called brand loyalty? It’s actually the never-ending lucrative supply straight from the goldmine that is... your data.
Under the Data Protection Act of 2018, you can follow a fairly simple online process to find out what information these companies have about you. After following Tesco’s procedure, I received list of every single purchase I have made, and where I made it, while using my Clubcard. Other than the guilt I felt at seeing the number of biscuits I bought while at uni, this data in itself was nothing shocking to me – just one long digital receipt. The real worry, however, is not what the data is, but how the data is used.
Building up a consumer profile of where, when, and what you buy helps companies predict your future spending habits, even before you are aware of this behaviour yourself. These profiles only become more profound as retailers share this information with each other, and obtain further data from third-party sources, while their profit margins shoot up and up. For example, Nectar – used predominantly in partnership with Sainsbury’s – shares data with at least 49 other companies including Argos and EasyJet according to Which?. It may seem that your grocery shopping habits can only say so much about you, but the accuracy with which Big Retail can now make predictions about us is often chilling.
One infamous example of this occurred in 2012, when an angry father marched into a Target store in Minneapolis, US, demanding to know why his teenage daughter had been receiving adverts for baby products in the post. Unknown to the father, his daughter was in fact pregnant, and Target had determined this based on a ‘pregnancy score’ that is applied to their female customers. The score
is calculated based on spending patterns to such an accurate degree as to predict how likely it is that the customer is pregnant, and in which month she is due. Of course, it could be argued that this is a technological innovation in data mining to be lauded: retailers know exactly what you want and when you want it, making the shopping experience smoother and more accessible. But really, this goes beyond simply targeted ads, and towards a culture in which the gradual removal of our agency and privacy is normalised.
Anecdotally, this seems to be the case. In conversations with my peers, many have little or no concern with the way their data is processed – ‘it’s already all out there anyway; what difference does it make?’. This is a frightening statement, as one comes to realise that we are the first generation to have grown up under the inescapable clutches of data mining. While data protection laws do help keep our personal information safe in some capacity, they struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing pace at which big corporations fight to know everything they can about you.
In the bigger picture, loyalty cards are just one piece of a giant data puzzle. Indeed, our generation has become acclimated to the state of things, content with consumerist model of exchanging your conscious and unconscious behaviour for a more personalised shopping experience. After all, if this is the notion of privacy that we have possessed throughout our lives, how could you expect people to think any differently?
Going forward, it is uncertain how governments and organisations are going to tackle the protection of data as companies move into a new and unknown terrain of acquisition. More is being done than before in terms of regulation, as the scope of who owns what information is becoming more fully realised, but so much has already been taken that it may be too late.
As technology is being developed that can literally read your conscious and unconscious emotional state in real time, the era of free economic agency may be coming to an end. And this is the ultimate cost of these loyalty cards, the ultimate decision for us to make: are we happy for all of our consumer choices to be made on our behalf, under the veil of personalisation and ease? It’s a decision we will have to come to terms with sooner than we may think.
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