Even smarter supermarket discounting

Continuing the theme … how to give me customised discounts based on my purchasing patterns? One way is to send me vouchers in the post, but that’s unsexy and expensive. And I’ll forget to bring the vouchers or lose them. Or I might give them to someone else, defeating the purpose of the targeted discount.

Let’s see if we can use an app to solve these problems … Vouchers can be pushed to the phone, but then how to validate them at the checkout? I suppose I could get a code to give to the cashier, but that’s clumsy, and again I might give the code to someone else. We need to make arbitrage a bit more difficult. We could do that by pushing the vouchers to my phone only when I enter the supermarket, but how to know this has occurred? GPS isn’t that accurate …

So how about this: When I enter the supermarket, I scan a QR code on my phone that is posted at the entrance. This code changes daily, and prompts the app on my phone to download my targeted offers for that day and show them to me. This also alerts the supermarket’s checkout computer that I’m in the store, and activates the discounts when I swipe my loyalty card at the checkout.

I still think this is a bit clumsy, what we really need is a better GPS system …