Nectar point and loyalty cards

From a retail industry insider :

So, you have a nectar card, you have an M&S loyalty card, you get vouchers that save you money when you shop. That's a good thing, right? Really? You know why you get vouchers? Ever heard the expression “There is no such thing as a free lunch”? Well, here's the proof. Did you know that retailers have historically paid large sums of money to market information companies for data about shopping habits? Why have they done this? Simply to better understand shopping habits and preferences. When you go to a store you are faced with a layout that has been prepared specifically to encourage you to spend more money than you planned to. The psychology of shopping has been an area of study for many years.

The purpose of loyalty cards is to essentially cut out the middle man by allowing retailers direct access to information on the products you buy, quantities, frequency, location, time, date spend and so on. Do you only buy certain products when they are on offer? Do you buy at a specific price point? Do you buy as a one off or regularly? Do you shop around? All of this information has value. But it does not simply have value to the specific retailer you are engaging with. The data that you are providing through your loyalty card shopping is not just used by your retailer of choice, but is sold on to other stores. Once the data is collected it is shared with advertisers and marketing companies, media organisations and governments and through this data you are being targeted with one specific aim.

That aim is to encourage you to spend beyond your means. Let us suppose that you have a loyalty card that suggests that you carry out the bulk of your spending within a week of payday each month. Over time this habit will be picked up, and if you pay attention you will see that there are more adverts in the middle of the month between programmes you watch for “pay day” loans. You will also find that you get letters from credit card companies specifically tailored to spreading costs. The upshot of this being that you are constantly encouraged to take advantage of these offers to spread out your spending by taking advantage of them. And why is this important? The same reason that it is important that as many young people as possible go to University or college. The best way of controlling the population is by making sure that as many people as possible are in debt from as early an age as possible.

If people are in debt they are forced to service that debt, you are essentially forced to work. What is a situation where one is forced to work called? I believe that the word you are looking for is slavery. This modern form of slavery means that you are constantly fighting a losing battle of maintaining lifestyle levels whilst servicing an ever increasing debt burden. Having established this position there is the opportunity to further increase indebtedness by encouraging gambling through state sponsored lotteries and the reduction of laws covering betting and casino companies. By creating an air of desperation and an attitude of “It will be all right” there is an opportunity to exert a measure of control previously only dreamed of by the most Machiavellian of governments. Believe it or not, there truly is nothing free in our consumer society.....