Health is often promoted, but then we have the other side.
Kaufland is a sponsor of the Color Run in Cluj. We heard there are color runs in other cities throughout the world, and the price was just a bit more than we expected. (I don’t remember paying anywhere near that much to run in Tucson, Brussels, or the UK, for instance. Runs were usually free, or donation based). But we like that Kaufland is behind so many sports initiatives in Cluj.
One of the recent promotions that we heard Kaufland was offering was the “banana or a donut” for each child, for only 1 ban, about a fifth of a euro cent. That’s almost like offering a free donut or banana.
They give the choice to customers, which sounds nice. Bananas are healthier, but way cheaper, on average. Also, they are much more common, these days (even if 30 years ago they would have been the exotic option.) Therefore, I think most people would choose the donut, to get their money’s worth, and also to get an unusual treat.
We didn’t see a lot of children in Kaufland to take up either offer, so we had to guess. Perhaps we can interview some people who work there soon, to find out what people did choose.
What would you choose? Health or better deal? Commonplace or unusual treat? Would your choice have been different had it been a mango or a donut, or a mango or a langos, or one of those truly exotic fruits that you can’t remember the name of or a langos?
We tend to like those apps, but hate them at the same time.
Advantages of in store apps:
old receipts
if you lose your receipt, you still have a digital copy stored in the app for a couple of months. This can even be useful on the way out of the store, if you get accused of stealing, and someone happens to steal your receipt. (Although it doesn’t help if they also steal your phone, but that sounds more like an elaborate prank your college roommate might play than a realistic situation for most of us.
You can use those old receipts for many other things, to track short term inflation, to compare prices at different shops, etc.
Nice treats.
We heard some people got free smurfs from Kaufland, or free playing cards from Lidl with the store apps. And, there is the donut or banana option.
They can be used to encourage good
Theoretically, apps can be used to encourage good eating habits, or perhaps even responsible shopping with environmentalism and so on. If there is a shortage of apples and a surplus of watermelons, the apps could encourage us to buy more watermelons, until the market corrects itself, the drought is over, or whatever else happens to bring things back to normal.
But no, this seems to be just in theory.
Disadvantages of apps
Time consuming.
It takes some time in line to take one out.
Privacy concerns
Need we say more? Store cards exist to create profiles on you, to trick you into spending more money and buying things that you normally wouldn’t buy.
Taking up space and data on your phone.
Many Romanian carriers offer plans with free unlimited data, but it still wears out the battery to use data to get your card to work.
Encouraging unhealthy habits
Even if you don’t care about spending extra money, most of the big sales are for less healthy food options. Yes, perhaps you’ll buy soda, candy-coated cereals, fatty foods, highly processed foods, and coffee anyway, but you might buy them more often and in higher quantities when you see them on the app. “Look, we’ll save ten euros if we buy all this junk food!”
We do sometimes hear that healthy foods are on sale, and sometimes it makes us want to download the app (especially at Lidl, where there is always some fruit or nuts that is only on deal if you get “Lidl plus.” Ah, Lidl, land of the fruit and nuts. Or at Carrefour, where ACT for food sounds like a worthy charity). However, on average it does seem that healthy foods are less likely to have an extra discount for members, even at Auchan, land of the surreveilance mad app makers.
Auchan and Carrefour’s apps are less fun than the German ones, but still carry many advantages. Mega Image has a card that doesn’t invade your privacy as much, and offers most of the same deals. Profi’s app is promoted by Mircea Bravo, and well, if you shop and Profi and like apps, then why not make Mircea’s grandma happy?
Anyway, Kaufland’s app is reportedly much less fun than it used to be. The Xtra app seems to be more like Lidl’s app, and we weren’t surprised to find out that both supermarkets are now owned by the same people. So, maybe Mega Image has the most fun app now, or Profi.
So, which will it be, banana or donut?
We decided that choices like this make us not want to get the app in the first place. Maybe we prefer apples and ice cream.
We found that having apps brings us to spend more money, especially if we look at the tags.
If you want to use an app, we find that Auchan’s and the other French supermarkets (like Carrefour) uses less electricity than Kaufland’s or Lidl’s. Cards are more environmental, because they don’t drain your phone’s battery so much. But, why not get them all and try them for yourself? Then ignore the sales, and get a banana flavored donut to go with your genetically modified donut flavoured banana.