When you go grocery shopping, there’s something more valuable to your grocer than the money you spend.
It’s you.
Each time you use that loyalty card or grocery app, grocers get valuable insight into your spending habits and product preferences.
They glean information about your education level, income, number of children or pets in the household. Some grocers take it a step further and track demographic data such as gender, ethnicity, and race, with purchase history. And that “first-party data” helps grocers not only better understand their customer, but make a big profit.
While this data is collected for research purposes, business analytics, marketing, and advertising, it can be sold to other data brokers or advertising technology companies.
