Interesting People mailing list archives
privacy: sobering
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 19:22:42 -0400
Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 18:10:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Office of The Provost <provost () georgetown edu> Subject: privacy: sobering X-X-Sender: provost@gusun To: dave () farber net Dave, I found myself in an upscale department store the other week, thinking I might buy something, but when I started to get closer to doing so, the clerk mentioned that they didn't take either Visa or MasterCard. Well, that put it paid for me -- I wasn't going to open another credit account for this mildly whimsical gift purchase. But I was curious, so later I called a couple of their stores and got a consistent story. I won't say what store this is, but I will say that if you want to know which it is, you could walk thoughtfully around Union Square in San Francisco and bear in mind that Macy's *does* take Visa and MasterCard. A customer service representative at one store said that they didn't take these cards because (1) these cards sold information about their customers to others (aha! privacy enthusiasts! yes!) because (2) these cards wouldn't give the store the kind of information about purchasers that the story wanted to get (OOPS!). So I persisted at another store and got the manager to talk to me: interesting. We did an experiment a while ago with five stores that did accept Visa/MasterCard and our overall business went down. Reason? Well, we use that information about customers to customize our marketing: catalogs, mailings, and such. Without that information, our aggregate business went down, so we stopped it. My point is that this is a tale about what Andy Odlyzko (whose piece you posted a few weeks ago) calls differential pricing: that is, tailoring what you sell to the people you're selling to. And here's a major national household name chain that can't do the business they want with credit cards that aren't permissive enough to suit them. Jim O'Donnell Georgetown Univ.
------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- privacy: sobering Dave Farber (Oct 05)