Vent - Let out your frustration

mass marketing

computers have ruined shopping... cause they keep trach of the stuff that's most bought. therefore I can't get king syrup anymore... corn meal is getting hard to get (plenty of cornbread mixes tho)... instead of keeping a supply of the old stuff... there's 50 items of NEW stuff... brer rabbit molasses is another thing gone by the wayside (there's actually 3 kinds now (NEW & IMPROVED) but not one of them tastes like the original AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

katielady 2002-11-19 16:09 294

o cornbread... do what I do... I always say I left my card in the car (which I did) & they use their own card for the "specials" - which I don't mind at all. :)

Cornbread 2002-10-06 13:11 171

Probably my biggest marketing pet peeve today are those stupid frequent shopper cards, also known as customer loyalty cards, and a number of other names. They imply that you get some kind of special discount by carrying this little card or keychain tag and letting them scan it when you buy groceries. And those heathen infidels who refuse to play their card games must suffer by paying the "regular price". From my observation, the truth is that the people with the cards are paying the regular price, and those without the cards pay an inflated "penalty price". Ripoff. Not trying to drum up some deep conspiracy story here, but even more sinister than the inflated price falsehood is the fact that they are building a detailed information database on their customers. This is most often denied, especially at the store level (where they probably don't know what information is being collected and how it is used anyway), but the trade and sale of individuals' personal information is really big business these days. So much so that there are entire computer empires built on this type of data business alone, with oodles of terabytes of peoples' personal data to be used or traded, or potentially misused. If all you can think of about this is "Who cares who knows what kind of breakfast cereal I eat?" then you are not thinking about the potential of this in very much detail. It makes me understand more about how our privacy and even our freedom can be slowly eroded. It also makes me understand a little more about how one day people won't be able to buy or sell without "the mark".

katielady 2002-09-29 13:03 145

yeah!!! you can't find spic & span in powder form anymore either & the liquid doesn't work near as well!!!

Momzilla 2002-09-26 20:15 61

No kidding! I've noticed that our store has cut WAY down on the variety of products, and instead carries more brands of exactly the same thing. I mean, for pity's sake, how different can five different brands of plain, dried pinto beans be? Any why is it than when a product is "new and improved" it's so often lost the exact property that was the reason we'd buy it to start with. Several of my favorite cleaning products, for example, are no longer available where I live. They are still manufactured, but impossible to find locally.