Hey guys and gals,
I hope most of you have at least one kind of privilege card/s which is given by a garment store, super market, service center, mobile company, jewelery store, shopping mall or some else place. Have any of you think about the real story behind these cards? This was a story told my one of the highest ranked market research expert, one friend of my and I will tell you this for you to get an idea about these cards.
Let’s begin from the process of getting such a card,
• You will be ask from the counter when you make a payment, ‘sir / madam, do you have (the name of the privilege card) card? If you say no, you will be given information about such card and there may be also Hugh publicity campaign with in the store or in mass media about such cards.
• If you intend to have such card, you may have to fill a fairly long application and hand over to counter with some money, in Sri Lanka mostly 100 rupees.
• Then you may get a temporary privilege card, and you may collect the original from the store next time you visit it or will be sent via mail.
• Every time you purchase something at the store, you will get points. In most of cases, for 100 rupees, you get one point.
• You can redeem your points when you ask at counter, you may get promotional brushers via mail through sms, you will get special discounts and points to selected items.
• You may upgrade to gold or platinum card, when you make certain amount of points such as 2000, or depending on the scheme.
That is the story of it as a brief and let’s thinks about the positives you earn and the super store earns separately.
Positives you earn;
• You get points at each purchase and you get a discount of 1% basically for each item.
• You may get gifts at special seasons such as wrist watches, pens, desktop calculators, mugs, vacuum flasks etc.
• You get discounts on selected items.
• You will treated with a nice smile by the girl at the counter.(specially, if you are a young guy)
Positives the card issuer or establishment earns:
• You will repeatedly visit the same outlet with out going for others.
• You will try to increase your points, so they get a good sale. You may some times buy unnecessary items just to increase the points.
• You will go behind the next level of the card, platinum or gold, so you spend unnecessarily to achieve that. (to earn 2500 points for example, you have to spend 2,50,000.00 rupees!!!)
• Since you have given your all details to the dealer or store, they know what kind of income you get, your social status, your family capacity, your hobbies, your interests and all. Then they will collect the details of your every purchase and analyze them to get a better idea about the market demand. Since there are more card holders, they get very strong data base. Depending on this they identify higher demand items, what are the periods they get more sale, what are the qualities customer expects and increase there profit by enormous amounts buy giving you just 1% discount. Not only that you have to pay for the cards in most occasions.
By the way, market research is very highly paying profession. For above mentioned kind of research, they have to spend millions billions of rupees if they get it done by market research company. They can save all the lot of that money and increase their profits because of the privilege cards!!!
• If you consider sharply, you will find that they will never give you discounts on essential food items, the presents they give you is more expensive than its real value, (as example, if you get a calculator for 200 points, you may buy it from the market for just 100 rupees)
You will realize that more benefits are getting by the card issuer, not the customer from the privilege cards.
I don’t want to criticize all, since there are very few which gives real benefits to the customer.
So my friends,
Before Appling for a privilege card, please think following.
• How often you visit that store of outlet and is there is a necessity to have such card and if it will really benefits for you.
• If there is any benefit you can have from keeping such card. (as example, if you are a owner of a service center, it is ok you to have a privilege card on lubricants)
• If your stores have branches, ask weather the card is applicable for all the branches.
• What is the period of validity of the card, if there is a time that your points get exhausted?
The topic is open for discussion. My sole intention is to educate my friend on very popular hidden truth of the current economy.
Thank you.
I hope most of you have at least one kind of privilege card/s which is given by a garment store, super market, service center, mobile company, jewelery store, shopping mall or some else place. Have any of you think about the real story behind these cards? This was a story told my one of the highest ranked market research expert, one friend of my and I will tell you this for you to get an idea about these cards.
Let’s begin from the process of getting such a card,
• You will be ask from the counter when you make a payment, ‘sir / madam, do you have (the name of the privilege card) card? If you say no, you will be given information about such card and there may be also Hugh publicity campaign with in the store or in mass media about such cards.
• If you intend to have such card, you may have to fill a fairly long application and hand over to counter with some money, in Sri Lanka mostly 100 rupees.
• Then you may get a temporary privilege card, and you may collect the original from the store next time you visit it or will be sent via mail.
• Every time you purchase something at the store, you will get points. In most of cases, for 100 rupees, you get one point.
• You can redeem your points when you ask at counter, you may get promotional brushers via mail through sms, you will get special discounts and points to selected items.
• You may upgrade to gold or platinum card, when you make certain amount of points such as 2000, or depending on the scheme.
That is the story of it as a brief and let’s thinks about the positives you earn and the super store earns separately.
Positives you earn;
• You get points at each purchase and you get a discount of 1% basically for each item.
• You may get gifts at special seasons such as wrist watches, pens, desktop calculators, mugs, vacuum flasks etc.
• You get discounts on selected items.
• You will treated with a nice smile by the girl at the counter.(specially, if you are a young guy)
Positives the card issuer or establishment earns:
• You will repeatedly visit the same outlet with out going for others.
• You will try to increase your points, so they get a good sale. You may some times buy unnecessary items just to increase the points.
• You will go behind the next level of the card, platinum or gold, so you spend unnecessarily to achieve that. (to earn 2500 points for example, you have to spend 2,50,000.00 rupees!!!)
• Since you have given your all details to the dealer or store, they know what kind of income you get, your social status, your family capacity, your hobbies, your interests and all. Then they will collect the details of your every purchase and analyze them to get a better idea about the market demand. Since there are more card holders, they get very strong data base. Depending on this they identify higher demand items, what are the periods they get more sale, what are the qualities customer expects and increase there profit by enormous amounts buy giving you just 1% discount. Not only that you have to pay for the cards in most occasions.
By the way, market research is very highly paying profession. For above mentioned kind of research, they have to spend millions billions of rupees if they get it done by market research company. They can save all the lot of that money and increase their profits because of the privilege cards!!!
• If you consider sharply, you will find that they will never give you discounts on essential food items, the presents they give you is more expensive than its real value, (as example, if you get a calculator for 200 points, you may buy it from the market for just 100 rupees)
You will realize that more benefits are getting by the card issuer, not the customer from the privilege cards.
I don’t want to criticize all, since there are very few which gives real benefits to the customer.
So my friends,
Before Appling for a privilege card, please think following.
• How often you visit that store of outlet and is there is a necessity to have such card and if it will really benefits for you.
• If there is any benefit you can have from keeping such card. (as example, if you are a owner of a service center, it is ok you to have a privilege card on lubricants)
• If your stores have branches, ask weather the card is applicable for all the branches.
• What is the period of validity of the card, if there is a time that your points get exhausted?
The topic is open for discussion. My sole intention is to educate my friend on very popular hidden truth of the current economy.
Thank you.
