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I was alerted to two stories regarding grocery stores, data mining, and apps from Franz Dill at The Eponymous Pickle. First, Kroger acquired "customer science" company dunnhumbyUSA last week with the goal of boosting their "Customer 1st" strategy:
Continuing dunnhumbyUSA's work, [new subsidiary] 84.51° mines mountains of customer transactions via Kroger's loyalty card program to figure out what shoppers want.
84.51° helps Kroger to thoughtfully evaluate what products to stock, expand or discontinue. The firm's insights are also used to send coupons relevant to shoppers' habits, such as issuing pet food offers to customers who actually buy pet food.
Aitken says noted 95 percent of Kroger's growth in the last decade has come from winning more business from existing customers – which is a smarter, most cost-effective way to do business. He notes too many industries – from mobile carriers to cable TV providers – chase after new customers with one-time incentives that ultimately encourage switching, not customer loyalty.
Also, Winn-Dixie is releasing a mobile app that features:
..."personalized" digital coupons, all stored on your smartphone or other electronic device. Winn-Dixie, a subsidiary of Bi-Lo Holdings, partnered with Coupons.com for this new savings system, which sends you cyber coupons based on your own shopping preferences.
The Winn-Dixie app also features a virtual shopping list and fuelperks rewards.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday May 05 2015, @02:06PM
Stop 'n Shop in the New England area already does exactly that. Place an order from your smartphone, pick it up at the store, or have it delivered to your home. I dunno the details though because I've never used either. But a friend of mine used to use the delivery thing occasionally. Apparently it kinda sucks for produce -- the employees picking it don't usually care of course, so you'll often end up with the ones left sitting around at the bottom of the bin that nobody else wanted. I don't think they do it intentionally, but it certainly could be used as a way to unload crap that was about to expire or bruised and disfigured or whatever.