Making Tracks: Loyalty Cards As Consumer Surveillance

Citation

Smith A & Sparks L (2003) Making Tracks: Loyalty Cards As Consumer Surveillance. In: Turley D & Brown S (eds.) European Advances in Consumer Research, Volume 6. Association for Consumer Research, pp. 368-373. http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=11294

Abstract
We investigate ethical and privacy issues concerning the use by retailers of loyalty card (club-card) transaction records. To investigate these issues we use one individual record for our case study (selected from a random sample of two-year purchase records of 254 cardholders from a major UK retail loyalty scheme). The individual selected has the greatest number of transactions, and therefore more data to interpret/reveal than others in the sample. This data record is interpreted to develop a 'picture' of an individual. The direction and extent of our interpretation raises ethical and privacy issues. Such issues are becoming increasingly important given loyalty scheme, technology, competition and surveillance developments.

People

Professor Leigh Sparks

Deputy Principal