Do you know what I like?

If you work in a supermarket, you just well might know what I like. Well, maybe not you specifically -- you the checkout clerk, you the butcher, you the customer service counter manager. But your management probably does.

That's because your employer goes to great lengths to keep track of what I buy, how much I buy, and when I buy it. The reason this matters so much to supermarket operators is because they make so little money on each item I buy - about a penny or two on every dollar I spend.

With such thin margins, supermarkets have to make it up in volume. Which they do, in spades - the supermarket industry is a $500-billion-a-year operation, according to a recent CNBC documentary on the industry. One percent of that amount is a pretty nice figure - $5 billion in profit on sales.

But to get that volume, each supermarket operator has to get people like me to spend as much as we can at their store, and the companies that make the stuff supermarkets sell want people like me to spend as much as we can on their stuff. And that's where the tracking comes in.

That little keychain tag that lets me save money on sale items in the store also feeds my purchases into a database. As a result, when I buy a can of Friskies cat food for my cat, I may get a coupon good for a dollar off Meow Mix when I check out.

The latest advance in this department is the hand-held scanner. This not only allows you, the shopper, to check out your own purchases as you make your way through the store, it allows the store to pitch attractive offers to you depending on where you are in the store. In the cereal aisle, for instance, it might display a big discount offer on a brand you usually don't buy while you're mulling over the Honey Bunches of Oats, or it might offer you an additional discount on a brand you buy all the time when you're in front of it.

In Philadelphia, where I live, these scanners have yet to be introduced by any of the major or minor chains in the region. But I wonder what this says about our willingness to surrender our privacy. We worry over governments using things like GPS to bill us for highway use, for instance, but think nothing of letting our local grocer know every last detail about our shopping and buying habits.

Does this level of tracking and profiling strike you as a touch Orwellian? Or do you not mind giving up some of your personal tastes and habits to save money? Let me hear what you have to say in the comments.

By Sandy Smith

Sandy Smith has been blogging for RetailGigs.com since 2010. In addition to launching award-winning newspapers and newsletters at the University of Pennsylvania and Widener University, Sandy is a veteran writer whose articles and essays have appeared in several local and regional media outlets, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia CityPaper, and PGN, and on several Web sites. He is also an active participant on several discussion boards, including PhiladelphiaSpeaks.com, where he posts as “MarketStEl.” He has been supporting himself through a combination of freelance and part-time work and unemployment compensation since early 2009 and is himself an active job-seeker. Read more of his posts on RetailGigsBlog.com and follow him to Nexxt for more job opportunities.

Do you know what I like?

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