Grocery chains make a lot of money by sharing customer information that some may find intrusive.
Grocery shoppers like Kroger (K) – Get a free reportLoyalty cards are often used for discounts offered by supermarkets.
But these cards are not used by companies just to provide a discount incentive to the customer.
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Using these cards collects personal data about the customer for the store, and the store makes money monetizing that information.
Kroger, for example, has carefully grown two units of its “alternative profit business” that monetize customer information, and Kroger expects to generate more than $1 billion in “profit opportunity,” according to the report. coding.
Grocers analyze all the data they collect and can sell to other companies to get information about what is being advertised to customers.
“I think the average consumer thinks of a loyalty program as a way to save a few dollars on groceries each week,” said John Davison, director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). coding. “They don’t think about how to funnel their data into this huge ecosystem with analytics and targeted ads and tracking. And I also think that’s by design.”
Below is a list of some of the information Kroger collects on its customers, according to the report. (Note: Any quotes in the text below have been added by coding Direct quotes I took reflect the company.)
personal information: Information you provide when you sign up for the loyalty program: name, email address, mailing address, phone number, membership ID, unique household identifier
Purchase date: Historical in-store and online shopping purchases (with no time limits on how long information is retained during your membership)
location: Your precise physical location in the store (with your consent), including when you entered and left the store (Kroger app, GPS and Bluetooth beacons within stores)
Financial and payment information: Credit or debit card numbers or other bank account numbers
Health related information: Where permitted by applicable law, to better serve you, we may draw certain conclusions about you based on your health-related shopping history.
Mobile device data: Mobile advertising identifier, IP address, browsing data, tracking pixel usage, and cookies
Demographic data: “age, marital or family status (including whether your family includes children), languages spoken, education information, gender, race, ethnicity, employment information, or other demographic information”
Biometric data: Face recognition (at select locations, with signage stating)
behavioral inferences: “We create inferred and derived data elements by analyzing your shopping history along with other information we have collected about you to personalize product offerings, your shopping experience, and marketing messages and promotions.”
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