Saturday, December 29, 2012

Debugging Shufersal Targeted Promotions


My wife and I are frequent customers of Shufersal, a major Israeli food retailer, as there is a store near our house. We even have a membership card, and use it every time we make any purchases.
From time to time, Shufersal send us coupons by mail, that seem to be tailored to our needs.

7 months ago our baby was born, and so our consuming habits changed. Diapers and milk formula became part of our weekly shopping. But Shufersal prices for these items are relatively high, and so we barely ever bought them there, and instead always bought them in pharma stores (mainly Superpharm), or online, upon promotions. But we did shop for few baby-related items there, so Shufersal could know through the membership card usage that we now shop for a baby.

It seems that recently Shufersal decided to find out what are the exact brands that we are consuming (as you probably know, customers are usually very loyal to specific brands and products, when it comes to babies - "if it works, don't change it").
They have sent us very attractively priced coupons for every possible milk formula products, baby food products, diapers, bottles, etc... Naturally, we did use the few that were really relevant for us.

Now I wonder what will happen next. Will we receive more coupons for the products we purchased ? Will they be priced equally attractively ? Did we disclose our customer preference and willingness-to-pay limit through the coupons ? Will they try to affect our preference by suggesting low prices for substitute brands ?

Updates will follow...