Every time you step into a grocery store, you step into a machinery of data that tracks, analyzes, shares, and influences your shopping behavior. Based on shopping history and data shared from data brokers—including internet browsing history and online purchases—grocery stores may infer your age, gender, race, economic status, family makeup, health conditions, or other lifestyle characteristics. Grocery stores might categorize shoppers as “interested in fitness and not price sensitive” based on often buying organic foods and visiting gym websites or “expecting mother with a toddler” based on purchases of prenatal vitamins and searching online for toddler-sized clothing. Grocers build detailed profiles of consumers to nudge them towards shopping choices that increase their profits, whether through different prices or personalized discounts and offers—at the expense of the consumer. Even worse, grocery stores also sell data gleaned about you to other companies, further enriching their profits while undermining consumers’ privacy.
Unfortunately they own a bunch of shit so it's not so easy to avoid for all areas
The Kroger Co. Family of Stores includes:
Baker’s
City Market
Dillons
Food 4 Less
Foods Co
Fred Meyer
Fry’s
Gerbes
Jay C Food Store
King Soopers
Kroger
Mariano’s
Metro Market
Pay-Less Super Markets
Pick’n Save
QFC
Ralphs
Ruler
Smith’s Food and Drug
don't forget about data obtained by your insurance, who'll jack up your premiums, and then jack them up again if you surpass the donuts purchased per month threshold
This week in "No shit, thats what its designed to do" Kroger invacive price cameras help Kroger raise prices across the board by seeing what consumers are willing to accept before they go somewhere else.
So like, if a hundred of us all filed through a store, picked up this one item, then set it back down, it would potentially be cheaper next week?
Is this the new protest instead of not buying from a particular company? Next Kroger you visit, pick up and set down all the nestle products you can find.
Genuinely asking, what difference would it make if I walk into the QFC, get immediately Face ID’d, grab a box of pop tarts that are arbitrarily priced higher because some AI told Kroger that my social status indicated I’d pay top dollar for frosted blueberry, if I pay cash or card at the checkout counter?
I've read some comments on other articles about this saying that by using cash and avoiding the loyalty card they won't have the data that shows how often you buy certain products and if you buy them at regular price or only during sales. I don't know if that's true, but it does seem somewhat logical to me that the AI is going to use your past purchases against you, they already use that same idea to send me paper coupons once a month based on stuff I usually buy.
The way Kroger works is that they absolutely ream you with the price-gouging if you don't let them track your purchases through your "kroger plus" card. It doesn't matter if you pay with cash or not.