On Tuesday, December 31, 2002, at 11:41 AM, Kevin Elliott wrote:
Yes. So?At 11:02 -0800 on 12/31/02, Tim May wrote:I am almost CERTAIN that at least some stores are keeping track of what's being bought and using it to encourage buying. i.e. when I still lived in the Great State of Illinois, Kroger had an interesting habit of giving out "coupons" with your receipt. They'd custom print a coupon when the printed your receipt. It didn't take much thinking to notice that the coupon they gave you was VERY closely correlated to what you bought. My favorite case was when I happened to buy 8 boxes of HotPockets and they responded with a "Buy 7 get 1 free coupon".On Tuesday, December 31, 2002, at 09:49 AM, Kevin Elliott wrote:* Dossier-compiling does not seem to be the motivation...at least not yet. The >data are too sparse, it seems to me. I don't know if people who "honestly" gave >a name and mailing address, and whose data were keypunched accurately, are >getting the "targeted mailings" for Midol, Attends, Trojans, etc. that the >technology can support.At 12:12 -0500 on 12/31/02, Adam Shostack wrote:Rummaging through my wallet...a grocery card in the name of Hughes, a
credit card with the name Shostack, and an expired membership card in
the name Doe.
Notice that exactly the same type of coupon is printed out with a cash or non courtesy card purchase. It's a purely local calculation. In programming terms, a purely local variable situation.
In my normal insulting way I would say "Duh" here. But I am attempting to be more polite, so I will say "Am I missing something in your analysis?"
--Tim May
