BY NIALL McCRAE

Traipse along a supermarket aisle and you will see the usual array of products on the shelves, some selected for discount deals. But pricing policy has changed.  Food retailers have opened a new front in competing for customers. Instead of matching or beating rival stores, the focus is now on loyalty cards, with two-tier pricing to incentivise shoppers into registering.

The price differential is increasing. Most of the promotions at Sainsbury’s are for Nectar cardholders. A bag of KP peanuts at Tesco, for example, is £2 on Clubcard, but £3 otherwise. For regular customers, it seems sensible to sign on to the scheme, and take advantage of the reductions, particularly after a period of rocketing food inflation. Every little helps….

But loyalty cards should be treated with caution. The marketing motive is not merely to reward customers with lower shopping cost (thereby reducing profitability). The real purpose is data harvesting. Noah Yuval Harari may be right in predicting our future status as ‘useless eaters’, but for now we are useful eaters. There is much to be gained from the comprehensive information gathered on every aspect of our lives. Data have become a valuable commodity, although we may be unaware of how our details are sold to third parties.

Supermarket loyalty cards are playing an important part in the development of a digital control grid. Of course, such schemes are not new. The Co-operative Society has given discount to members since the late nineteenth century, although its close association with the Fabian Society (whose sinister motto is a wolf in sheep’s clothing) should be noted. Remember Green Shield stamps?

Nowadays joining any loyalty scheme is done online. Soon the cards will be withdrawn, as they are nothing but a legacy of the old physical world. The infamous World Economic Forum video featuring the line ‘you will own nothing, and be happy’ also emphasises that people will have no privacy. The global corporate-state regime will know everything about you. Like digital currency, loyalty cards will be programmable to the level of individual curtailment or enhancement.

In the coming ’15-minute cities’, a policy promoted as the guaranteed provision of vital amenities and services within walking or cycling distance from home, those supermarket reward schemes will be put to more radical use. You will be rewarded for buying the products that the authorities and retail companies want you to buy. Anyone with an ounce of critical faculties will know that that does not mean what’s good for you.

The digital system will be finely tuned for individual nudges, depending on previous purchasing. It won’t just be alcoholic drinks that will be limited per time period. Customers might find themselves unable to buy a packet of pork chops, if they have reached their monthly meat allowance. Lab-grown locust substitutes will be cheap as chips, though.

But more significantly the 15-minute city food store will only serve inhabitants of that zone. If you venture into a neighbouring area, you will not be allowed to buy anything but essentials (a bottle of water on a hot day), or perhaps you will be barred from entry. Your Aldi is the branch in your 15-minute part of the city, not an Aldi two miles away. How’s that loyalty thing working out for you?

What can we do to stop this oppressive prospect? I refuse to participate in Apartheid pricing. Any product for which I am expected to pay more to make it cheaper for loyalty lemmings will not go in my basket. That is likely to become more difficult, as the range of punitively priced products expands. But why use supermarkets at all, if they treat you so badly?

As much as possible, use independent greengrocers, butchers, bakeries, fishmongers, etc. Most of the proprietors willingly take cash, and as fellow members of the community they are more interested in human beings than in profiling. And they are more inclined to know the true meaning of loyalty.

Niall McCrae is the author of ‘Green in Tooth and Claw: the Misanthropic Mission of Climate Alarm’ (2024).