Nectar Ninja ... I don't think so!!

The other day PP over at Small Treasures shared her magnificent Nectar Ninja facts and figures, it makes for such fascinating reading doesn't it, when your shopping is dissected in this way.

Her post inspired me to go into my app and check out my own, which although equally fascinating are nowhere near as impressive.

Seeing it in black and white (and in many other colours) it does make you rack your brains to think back over what you've bought in the past year.  As you can see I do seem to spread the things I buy out over all the parts of the supermarket.  A little bit from each category.

The highest of which seems to have been cupboard fillers.

I think that may be because I always pick up some packs of pasta, rice and sauces to go into the Foodbank box at the exit.  Some things I don't know about at all because Alan has the same Nectar card number as me and he obviously buys his milk there on occasion .. and perhaps some ready meals too!

Between us we only shopped there 28 times over the course of last year, mainly because in our town Sainsbury's is the smallest supermarket so we tend to get most things at Aldi or Booths and use Sainsbury's for specific items or to pick up things on the way to Mum's as it is on the back road out of town.

The veg to fruit ratio seems fair as I eat way more vegetables than fruit, although I do buy the majority of them from Booths now.

It seems I am the number four purchase of Naturli in Garstang!  

This is actually the main reason that I go to Sainsbury's regularly as it's the only place in town that has been selling it up to now.  It's delicious by the way, the nearest thing to Lurpak that is dairy-free.

And yes, it's my top buy.

Closely followed by bananas and Quorn ham (delicious fried as a 'bacon butty').

Now I find all this fascinating as I had been in retail for most of my working life and loved it.  The push for sales and the financial workings out of operating a shop are in my blood.  But we have to remember that these cards are dangerous little things, the Nectar card, Tesco Clubcard et al are the retailers dream and advertisers main source of information about us, the great shopping public.

The Tesco Clubcard was trialled in two towns in the UK in 1993/94, and I happened to live near one of them ... Barrow in Furness, so I have held a Clubcard since the first day it was launched.  I remember my Dad being so excited to get his when they were rolled out nationally in 1995 and telling me about all the benefits, not realising that I had been using it for so long already.

At first I guess we were all so naïve at what this innocent little piece of plastic was actually up to.  Our shopping habits have now been monitored for years and looking back at the Nectar facts and figures above, this gives us just the tiniest glimpse of what the supermarkets actually know about us. 

They know where we live,  what we eat, how often we purchase things, how well we respond to offers and savings and how much money we spend with them.  From this baseline they can plot and plan what to offer us in the future, what to tempt us with and how to tempt us back if we stray.

It can be quite scary stuff if we think about it too much, so I guess if we have the cards we just have to get the best value we can from them and learn to use them in a way that suits us.  We should try not to be tempted to buy things just because we are offered them at a reduced rate ... unless we really need them at that time of course.  But most of all we should consider if we want our information to be held in banks of computers just so that we can save 40p on a tin of beans.

I'll be spending my Nectar points just as soon as I need to more vegetables.  😄

Sue xx