You can almost hear the shout–”me, too, me, too.” That’s the grocery stores trying to grab headlines and let us know that they have plenty to offer and plan to reward us for our patronage. It all started with frequent buyer clubs that give us a keycard to scan when we shop. That way stores know what we buy and can generate specific coupons to tailor savings to our needs. Invasive? Maybe once, now it’s insignificant. They know. Oops, sorry, meant to say that helps them “honor” their frequent shoppers and tell us how much we’ve saved.
Don’t mark it up so much and then you won’t talk to me about these fictitiously large savings numbers. That’s really not a complaint. Am happy to be a member and be a saver. Honestly.
Aggressive tactics are taking over. Harris Teeter knocks off $10 for a minimum $50 purchases. Not so sure how long that’s going to last, but we call that 20% savings. Safeway occasionally gets in on that game but seems to prefer the coupon route. There was a new one today: Giant Food had a $1 doubler coupon–you know all those $1 off coupons that you find–now if you spend $15 this week, you can magically turn a $4 savings into $8–that should make people run out and buy more newspapers–this is an impressive insert. May be in response to Harris Teeter’s coupon tripling effort last week! Stores cannot afford to invent their own value game.
High-end grocers have been nibbling at the edges but Balducci’s decided to jump in with daily specials, e.g. Sunday, 1/2 price bagels. They even put a toe in the water with 5% off coupons each week this month. Hey, it’s not 20%, I get it, but I recognize that no one wants to be left out of the discount game.
As with restaurants, many of these discounts are limited to “members.”
Sign up and save.
You’ve got little to lose, they already know all about you!
A Little Footnote or Two: Updates « Allbeforecoffee’s Blog said
[...] final note on the grocers. It seems that tracking is so powerful that your absence from the aisles is actually a positive. I just received a survey questionnaire and 4 separate $5 off coupons from Harris Teeter. They miss [...]