I’ve always been fascinated by consumer profiles. When Tesco introduced the Clubcard, David Sainsbury initially rejected the idea of introducing a similar scheme. However when Sainsbury’s saw the adverse affect that the Clubcard had had on Sainsbury’s sales, they soon changed their minds.
The value that you the consumer get from “loyalty cards” (usually expressed as points – so you don’t realise how little it is) is nothing compared with the information you’re giving the retailers.
Clive Humby, from marketing firm Dunnhumby, helped Tesco to establish their Clubcard in 1994. Lord MacLaurin (who was then the chairmen of Tesco) famously said “What scares me about this is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years”.
It’s very easy to see how profiling works. YouGov kindly let you search their information online: www.yougov.co.uk/profiler
Enter your favourite products, and it will tell you all sorts of things about other people who like that product:
So the shops can use this data to predict what sort of thing you may want, and more importantly what they can try and sell you to make more profits.
As it’s nearly Christmas, and just for a bit of fun, I thought it would be interesting to compare the politics (and possible gender) of people for different roasts:
