Saturday, October 18, 2008

Personalized offers at the grocery store

I shop at Ica, as do many other Swedes - it's one of the largest chains of grocery stores, if not The Largest. I have their store card, which means that all my purchases are logged. I don't mind that. Especially not when they use it for something that benefits me! Yesterday, I received a bunch of coupons "just for me", that were based on my previous buying patterns. I'm pretty darn pleased - I admit to buying all of those things (well, there was one surprise...) I hope they'll keep this up - I much rather get coupons I'll actually use than completely useless offers. How about you? Does your store offer this? Do you like it? I do see that some people have an integrity issue with this, but I personally don't.

Here are my offers this month:

-hard taco shells (yup, we buy taco tubs every now and then)
-fresh basil (ooh, indeed)
-Häagen-Dazs ice cream (yes.. yes. I indulge.)
-cream cheese (not something I buy a lot, but it happens)
-red Danish hotdogs (this was the surprise. I've never, ever bought this, but when confronted, Per admitted that he frequently gets this when he's home alone)
-vitamin-c fizzy tablets (every morning!)
-cat food (obviously)
-bake up baguettes, the kind you just stick in the oven for freshly baked bread in the mornings (we like this on weekends)
-organic tortilla chips (ok, I admit it)
-feta cheese (definitely!)

10 comments:

Jessica said...

Those integrity issues, don't want purchases logged and receive personalised offers, don't use the store card. Problem solved.

glamah16 said...

We have similar but I dont tons of offers like this. Just randomly generated coupons at check out.I like how you confronted your husband on his eating habits when home alone. Its always sausages with these men!

e said...

I agree, I love this. Finally we get discount on things that we actually want to buy. We never used the ICA discount before. This is the entire point with having a store card.

Anonymous said...

I don't like it at all. We've been thinking about cancelling our card. I know the cards have always been all about monitoring habits, also before the personalized offers so you could argue that this is more upfront but I still don't like it. Our offers were strange btw, a lot of things that we have only bought twice.

onemorehandbag said...

I like it and don't mind being a "transparent consumer" at all. Anyone may know how much toilet paper and which brand of milk I buy if they are interested. Supermarkets where I live (Austria) don't have really personlised offers (yet?) as much as identical reductions for all card-holders.

Jessica said...

I got offers for thing that I actually use. Before I could get offers for diapers and cat food. I don't have children, neither do I have a cat. Of all 9 offers I use, eat or drink all, and I'll take those at the value of 70 sek over the value coupon of 25 sek at any time.

Anonymous said...

In the Netherlands, only general offers are made for owners of the shop card.
So, now I have an anonymous shop card. I like to exchange it with the owners of other anonymous shop cards. Sometimes also people before or behind me in the line ask for the shop card and I like it to borrow it to them...

The Öbergs said...

I'm more interested in what cat food you buy from ICA. :-) I've always bought IAMS for my cat - just curious.

Anne said...

Monica, it's just their breakfast food ;) They get to share a tiny pouch of "wet" food everyday, usually Kitekat or Whiskas. (They don't seem to care all that much, as long as we vary it, they really grow tired of the same kind after a few weeks.) For their main food, they get Royal Canin from the pet store :)

Feline Flodin said...

ICA - sponsrar Den nya välfärden. ;P ICA - borgarbutiken! :D Tacka vet jag stalinist-Coop... :D