Frequent Shopper Perks

My wife is a Kroger shopper. She shops the sales but you have to have that Kroger Plus card to benefit from those deals. They make it worth keeping up with that card as annoying as it is. If she spends over $100 she gets $.10 off per gallon of gas at the Kroger pump. That was a huge incentive when gas was almost $4.00 a gallon a few months ago.
But, my wife’s biggest struggle is keeping up with the card. She is always changing purses and coordinating wallets and sometimes that card does not make it into the current purse. This situation can quickly become a dilemma when it is time to shop.
As I read on in chapter 11 about frequent shopper programs it started in about technological advancements. The different ways retailers can get your identity and information without having to ask for it. The one most interesting to me was the fingerprint scanning. With a touch of your finger the retailer can do everything from accrue your frequent buyer points to debit your bank account. Never again would you have to worry about where that card went.
But, with any technological advancement come pros and cons. The pros are that you would not have a card to have to keep up with, no password to memorize and a fingerprint is harder to steal than a card.
Now on to the cons of fingerprint scanning. If you loose a card or forget a password you can get another and start over with a new one. If your fingerprint is stolen…and it can be done..you are stuck with it the rest of your life. An extreme and gruesome reality would be people getting their fingers cut off for their print.
The fingerprint scanning technology is not big in the U.S. yet. But it is a huge success in Germany. Over ¼ billion people now use fingerprint scanning in Germany. You can bet it is just a matter of time before that technology is widely used here.