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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

>The continued investment implies that the market has spoken: Your data has value.

>Your data has value.

Does it. Harbor Freight already knows it's customers are cheapskates and Whole Foods already knows it's customers barely look at the prices? Backing that up with data is nice but how much value does it really have?

FOMO is a big thing at the corporate management level. A million here, a million there to run pilot programs and do partial roll-outs seems like cheap insurance against getting blindsided by something you wrote off as a fad.

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>Your data has value.

> Does it. Harbor Freight already knows it's customers are cheapskates

Actually, that's a great example of a company that strategically prices items differently for different customers. Some of their customers are cheapskates and hit up hfqpdb.com and do the math to find the best coupon for every item they buy. Some just use the coupons in the flyer they get in the mail. Some of their customers pay the shelf price. The price essentially adjust to how cheap that particular customer is based on how much time they're willing to spend looking for coupons. Customers who don't care pay an inflated price.

I would bet a large portion of their profit comes from the people in the middle -- who were lured into the store with a coupon and end up buying a bunch of other stuff at inflated prices. I could totally see them being very interested at identifying who those customers are and how to lure them into the store.

==Harbor Freight already knows it's customers are cheapskates and Whole Foods already knows it's customers barely look at the prices?==

If this is how you think pricing decisions are made, I don't know what to say.

On the one hand, we have the lived experience of increasing surveillance and targeting, an investigative article discussing it, and long, documented history of data investments from large corporations.

On the other hand, we have speculation that it's all FOMO.

You don't run pilot programs and eight-year roll-outs of things you aren't taking seriously.

I hear this all the time.

"All the smart guys are spending money on it, it must be valuable!"

You could use this logic to invest in real estate in 2007. Or you would've been eager to invest in WeWork had their IPO not been fucked. You would also believe self-driving cars are a good idea, but I'd bet my life savings against it knowing what I know.

Don't assume you're playing the same game as them when you can't actually provide any data that what they do works. Where is the actual "X dollars of surveillance turns into Y dollars return" data points? You're just providing speculation no better than the person you're arguing with, and honestly your argument is less compelling.

How much is the potential of loss prevention anyways? I've seen tangible effects in store where certain products are behind glass shelves and you must get permission to purchase one and then it goes in this funky plastic box you take with you to checkout, sometimes right around the corner by the glass cage. I'm assuming theft is growing to have responses like that enacted which are incredibly inconveniencing especially when there's no affiliate nearby.

Knowing I'll burn up a bunch of time waiting for one of those lockdowns to be opened I usually order online and pickup in store those items I know are locked up.

It’s probably more helpful to think about it at the margin: starting from some current point equilibrium for some spend $X what is the incremental lift $Y? Because that lens probably more accurately reflects a real purchase decision.

Harbor frieght sells the same shit for years at a time. Their sales are always rotating. As a customer I basically have enough info from 3 months of their ads that I have 0 fomo anymore and also I have a good idea of what the price on an item should be. So essentialy all of their targeting taught me how to maximize them.

Also due to any lack of slack in their product line, I don't have anything I'm missing out on.

So basically, sell me latex gloves for <$7 or I'm not coming in. Magnetic screw trays for $.99 or the bigger ones for $1.99 or not coming in. I can wait literal years for that motorcycle lift to drop to $250 instead of $475.

in other words, they've successfully segmented you and created a loyal customer, with a bonus of inventory management reliability.

there's nothing wrong with that--i do it with my local grocery/big box stores too.

I guess that depends on how you define loyal. If I need a consumable tool I'll check there and amazon. Other than that I never go there. So loyal I guess?

yes, loyal doesn't mean exclusive, just that it's on your short list, which is immensely better for a business than not being on the short list (exclusivity is an unrealstic expectation anyway).

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