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Supermarket rewards card- yes or no?
I have held out for years from getting a loyalty/membership card from supermarkets as I hate the tracking that they do. But here in the UK so many prices are now locked behind it in most supermarkets, it feels like I’m just giving them so much extra money it’s getting ridiculous. I end up spending more money to shop where they don’t do this, but most of the major players are now adding these member only prices it’s hard to keep the status quo.
For other privacy minded people, how do you manage this?
I am a big believer in the vegan diet. Less cruelty in the food system, less environmental pollution, and better for human health.
I want some analyst looking at my purchasing record and noticing "Hey! This guy isn't buying animal products or processed food. He isn't buying things we price gouged. Other people aren't either. Let's think about adjusting things.".
Why do they need to track individuals for that insight? They obviously know what they are selling when they are restocking. If their vegan section is always sold out, they can restock more frequently to sell more. Why do they care how much of their vegan stuff is bought by single millenial pregnant donkeys? Profit maximization. By playing their game, you are effectively saying: Milk me for as much money as you can! Manipulate my thoughts as you please to make the rich richer! I am yours and I'm loving it!
I gladly pay what they ask, but I'm not investing in the ad industry that is spending countless billions every year into manipulating me to buy crap I don't need. Fuck that all the way to hell and back. You can put your stupid reward card into my cold dead hand.
I can't follow this logic... surely this is having the opposite effect of what you want, by indicating that they should increase pricing on vegan food, thus making non-vegan options more appealing?
I think it's less about pricing, more about changing inventory. If people buy more vegan food, they'll stock more vegan food and hopefully remove non-vegan food to make room for the new options.
That makes sense, and I suppose the last few years has shown that supermarkets don't really care about finding an excuse to raise prices...
By indicating that they should stock more vegan and healthy things and fewer animal products.
It’s not always the case that “people buy more therefore increase prices”. Especially when those things are in the “luxury spending” category which, vegan food definitely still is in. It only applies to commodities.
Before something becomes a commodity, increase in popularity creates increase in investments which decreases the price (by decreasing the cost) in favour of further increased volumes, and sometimes increased margins too.
Insights into direct individual shopping habits can incidentally accelerate this loop. It’s not needed, but it can make the investment loop more efficient and thus get to commodity faster.
Especially in the luxury spending category I would imagine that cost is not so much the deciding factor in prices. If people were really trying to safe every penny they wouldn't buy these things in the first place. People are willing to pay more for these goods so that's what the price will be, no matter the cost.
If the individual shopping data shows that many people only buy vegan food, then a price difference to the non-vegan food doesn't influence their shopping habits. So why not sell the vegan food more expensive, independently of the costs? Vegan is clearly very important to that group of people and they will pay the higher price anyway.
You are forgetting a lot of factors.
First, if someone is willing to spend more on one item but the data shows they are likely to be saving up elsewhere for it, this is pressure for prices to come down.
If data shows a lot of people are interested in the item should it be a lower price, this is pressure for prices to come down.
I could go on quite a bit but in general, supermarkets are not in the business of selling luxury items. They are in the volume business. More reach means more volume means more opportunities to buy more products.
I don't really believe this will help you too much, your personal purchasing history may let them market to you more effectively but they already know how much vegan stuff gets bought and surely make stocking decisions based on it.
It’s very upsetting to me that grocery stores have started forcing everyone to join their rewards programs. The “deals” you get by becoming a member aren’t even deals. Grocery stores have increased their prices for non-rewards members and allow you to purchase groceries for a normal price if you swipe your rewards card.
I don’t know what the equivalent in the UK would be (maybe Aldi), but in the US, Trader Joe’s is affordable and doesn’t have a rewards program. The only downside is that it has smaller portions that make it harder for families to do their shopping there.
If you are already an Amazon member, Whole Foods uses your Amazon account as the rewards account. If you shopped there, you at least wouldn’t have to give away personal data to additional companies.
I agree with you on how many stores have simply started punished customers that don't have their loyalty cards, but I'd argue that Trader Joes is not particularly affordable. Aldi is significantly cheaper than Trader Joes, and even the regular grocery stores are cheaper (without the loyalty cards) than Trader Joes. I honestly can't understand why they are so busy/popular. Maybe they have good sales that people are after?
I like Trader Joe’s because of the lack of options. If you go to a traditional grocery store, you have to compare a bunch of equivalent items and make a decision about quality vs price. In Trader Joe’s, you walk in and grab what you need without having to put extra thought into it.
Ah you said it first. Aldi has the "only one option" thing going for it as well and it's cheap in a way TJs isn't IME
Hard to compare when one is in a state where we finally got Trader Joe's, but Aldi still hasn't entered (CO). TJ's is still better than our regular grocery options pricewise.
Our grocery market is a nightmare here. Kroger (in King Soopers/City Market livery) has a stranglehold on the regular grocery store market, Albertson's/Safeway has given up on competing and is letting their remaining stores rot, Walmart is a nonstarter (and their produce and meat are garbage), the Targets that have groceries are no good for anything not packaged, and everything else is in the expensive natural foods category (Sprouts, Whole Foods, Natural Grocers) or your bulk membership clubs (Costco/Sam's).
Allegedly Aldi has bought property in a couple cities in the state, but there's been no word on construction even starting, never mind any opening dates. WinCo is supposed to open their first store in the state in a north Denver suburb, but again, aside from the announcement that it's happening, it's been silent on that front.
I'd kill to have enough grocery options to where TJ's is an expensive one, not one of the cheapest.
Oof, yeah that sounds rough. I moved across the country a couple of years ago and Aldi was in both places, so I figured they had a pretty good penetration in the country.
I have the opposite problem; around these parts, supermarkets keep trying to force me to buy minimum amounts of things, and since I'm a bachelor it's difficult to use up all the produce before it spoils... It's really hostile to people who live alone.
That comment was specifically at Trader Joe's from my reading. Trader Joe's definitely does not have minimum amounts of things, they don't really do the bulk thing and instead aim for the smaller higher quality fare. The closest thing I get to "bulk" there is a bag of apples.
Yeah I was trying to say that shopping at Trader Joe’s is harder for families due to their smaller portion sizes.
I think this is also why some people claim Trader Joe’s is very affordable and others say it’s expensive. It’s cheap for single people or couples who, for example, don’t need to buy 2lbs of tortellini at a time, but more expensive for families who do need to buy 2lbs of tortellini.
Yeah, the "buy three and get a big discount" sales are pretty annoying. I rarely want more than one of something even though I have a family.
I'd use Aldi as a better comparison in the US, unless Trader Joe's has more locations in other parts of the country. I have 3 Aldi (and Krogers and other stores) and the nearest TJ is hours away. I know Aldi depends too but it's much more of a traditional albeit discount grocery store
At least in California, Trader Joe’s is plentiful and Aldi is harder to find.
Ah gotcha, it would still not be an affordable regular trip for me, barring some major price changes from the last time I shopped there. Only place I can find meringues (the little bite sized ones) regularly anymore though
That really depends on where in California you reside. In my area there are more Aldi stores than Trader Joe's. Not by a huge amount, but it is noticeable.
Yes, Aldi/Lidl in the UK have held out, as has Waitrose. Waitrose is too expensive, and Aldi/Lidl are too far away for me, and I find their food goes off quite quickly.
In a way, I would rather give data to a different company to avoid over centralisation of all my information, especially when it’s different domains of information.
Lidl already has a reward scheme in the UK as well, they just haven't locked any pricing behind it yet.
Ah my bad
Maybe spreading your purchases among a bunch of stores is better privacy-wise than concentrating all of them in a few or only one?
I don't know how they do it in the UK, but in the US rewards accounts are tracked by phone number. <local area code>-867-5309 has never failed me.
My whole family still uses my moms old house phone. No idea who owns it now if anyone but we’ve been using it for groceries for like 30 years and we don’t plan on stopping
Hmm...
I did this with a UK Nectar reward card account and now my account with them is effectively bricked because it won't let me in without sending a verification text to a number I gave them which isn't a number (their input validation was non-existent, I literally just mashed the keyboard for a few seconds). I can't register another card/create a new account using the same physical address, which is odd because more than one person could live there or I could have moved.
Admittedly I have put slightly more effort into writing this comment than I have into fixing a 'problem' which I do not care about, so it's probably solvable. My reward card still gets me discounts in store, I don't get the digital coupons but given in the past they were always utterly useless I don't think I'm missing much. "Oh, this guy has never bought peanut butter, maybe 50p off a jar will tempt him?" No you stupid fucks I just don't like the stuff. "Hmm, he's never bought pet food so maybe 15% off pet insurance is a great personal offer"
This is what I was going to say. You don't get the rewards, but you still get (most) discounts. I say "most" because at least my local grocery store also does "digital coupons" that you attach to your account and redeem at checkout.
There's also always the option of filling out the form with bogus information.
Yeah phone numbers are a problem. I would love a service which allowed masked phone numbers like they do for email (e.g. iCloud or fastmail).
Oh, this exists! Firefox Relay lets you have one alternative phone number, and there is another service I can't remember the name of at the moment that lets you have up to... Something like 9? They're all limited in various ways — phone numbers can't be handed out arbitrarily, the way that email addresses are, because there are far fewer of them available, and they can't receive automated texts from short numbers. Still nice to have, though!
I don’t know of a reliable option that will work everywhere, but for myself I found out that my phone is capable of two different numbers at the same time, so I have my normal SIM for my normal number, and an eSIM for a second phone number. I found a cheap pre-paid long expiry option (currently pay AUD$10 for a one-year expiry) and all the services that totally definitely need my number for real genuine non-spam reasons are given that number.
Once I’m sick of the amount of spam building up too much with this number, I’ll just choose to not renew it next year, and sign up again with a new number, and start over!
I will just point out that if you're purchasing your groceries with a credit card, they already can (and probably are) tracking your spending habits and possibly correlating this with data from other sources. I have sort of given up because I don't have the energy to worry about any but the most egregious privacy invasions. Also, when I was a grad student, I had a lot of friends who didn't have cars, and they would buy their groceries with my loyalty card (which got me free gas) and I would take them places. It was a pretty good trade.
They're not doing that in the UK. Some supermarkets claimed they never did that kind of tracking anyway but I didn't believe them. But it's against the law now. Thanks GDPR!
I do believe you can legally opt out of this 3rd party sharing for every credit card by calling the number on their information privacy page in the card agreement and running through a 2-3 minute phone menu.
The process is pretty much identical for every card and financial account I've done so far.
just don't give them real information. 5551234 in your area code is almost always someone if you only want the deals and not the points.
For me, I just use 555 with the last four digits of my real number for all of these cards. I also use a fake name for absolutely everything like this. Its a decent compromise.
In my very anecdotal experience, shopping at stores that have loyalty programs generally results in paying more for groceries than stores that don't have those kinds of schemes. The place I shop at the most is a locally owned grocer, and their produce is usually something like 1/2 to 1/4 the price of the major grocery stores. While not quite as dramatic, Aldi and Winco offer very competitive prices generally, and Smart & Final stores are usually a bit of a mixed bag but generally have slightly lower prices for most things. None of them have loyalty programs.
I have to acknowledge, though, that this because I have won the geography lottery. I'm in California, where most of the fresh food is grown, so my primary source of food (produce) is cheap and easy to get. I'm also in a suburban environment, so there is heavy competition for grocery stores. I'm also in an area that has strong Asian demographics, so there's an entire category of stores that most people don't have access to: large Asian markets, where prices on produce and imported delicacies are pretty low in general even when they do have loyalty programs.
Your anecdote seems to contradict your anecdotal experience. That is, grocery stores with loyalty programs and cheap produce.
Anyways, I think stores with loyalty programs tend to have cheaper groceries overall, including produce. Although I don't think it's causal. Rather, large chains benefit from economies of scale and tend to have loyalty programs. Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Meijer, Albertsons, Target, etc. Local groceries tend to have higher prices. Some farmers markets can be cheaper but many of those are even more expensive.
Well, I did say generally, meaning there are stores that buck the trend. And your experience is highly dependent on where you live. If you live where there aren't many options, the prices are going to be more expensive because they don't have to be competitive. I'm in California, where roughly a third of the country's produce is grown, so the logistics don't have to be super complex for most things and smaller stores can compete more easily.
Unfortunately the situation in the UK sounds a little different as I'm not sure there are any grocery stores not running these schemes anymore apart from the 2 more premium options on the market who consistantly cost a lot more for identical baskets of shopping.
It's slightly annoying, but I haven't heard of any harm coming from getting a grocery loyalty card. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing you need to think twice about.
Years ago there was a case where the parents of a pregnant teen learned that they will be grandparents soon because the grocery store sent their daughter some coupons for motherhood paraphernalia.
You might say that the parents should know about that. But infering information from data is never perfect. If your rent goes up because the credit score company of your landlord thinks you are more likely to miss your payments because their AI found a correlation between increased Mountain Dew consumption and missed rent payments, and your grocery store told the credit score company how much Mountain Dew you buy to make a few pennies, your rent goes up for no reason and literally nobody knows why.
Even if the algorithms that make predictions about you from your data are perfect 99.999% of the time, they will still be wrong all the time because they make so many predictions. And you have no way to correct any mistakes because you don't even know about them.
If a guy with a notebook would follow you and note down everything you buy, you would probably freak out. But if the guy is invisible, it's totally fine even if you know what he's doing.
See this post about the Target / pregnant daughter thing.
There is targeted advertising that’s super blatant (you shop for something and see ads for it on unrelated websites) and then there are coincidences that someone thought were targeted advertising.
Good point. Thank you.
Although the article seems to support my main point: Algorithms are far from perfect and we shouldn't automate so many decisions based on them.
It's relatively harmless (but still harmful) in the case of advertising, but any profit-oriented company sitting on a pile of personal data will monetize it in any way they can and let the individuals or society take care of the fallout. They don't care if they are wrong 1, 10 or 20 % of the time as long as there's a net profit.
I was thinking about that story just a few days ago! When it first came out I believed it, but I later -- when, frankly, I had become more skeptical of popular science and the media :( -- became convinced that there was simply no way it was true. Thank you for posting something diving into it in more detail.
Not OP but I don't want any person or organization profiling my individual shopping cooking and eating habits. It's intrusive.
I acknowledge your point, but it’s more of the principle, and what could be theoretically deduced by your purchase history (especially for food which is inherently linked to biology and health).
Also, all of these are ultimately done to try and increase your spending, and done for the companies benefit, not yours. It also opens the way for more personalised pricing in the future, which is where the consumer is really on the back foot.
Yes, grocery stores try to sell food any way they can. For example, by putting candy next to the register.
However, the main effect of loyalty cards is that shoppers declare whether they care about saving money or not. The people who choose to play the game get lower prices, and the people who decide not to, for whatever reason, pay higher prices. Subtle behavioral tricks would need to be implausibly effective to cost you more than you save by playing the game.
I sometimes decide that playing these games is not worthwhile, but there's a cost to opting out. It's up to you to decide how much convenience or doing things out of principle is worth to you.
All this is assuming you shop in the same store. Going elsewhere is always an option.
I believe this article has been linked on Tildes previously. It's known that Kroger in particular has been abusing loyalty program users, but there's no guarantee that others aren't doing it as well. Ultimately, loyalty programs may cost you more as well as exposing your shopping analytics to third parties you wouldn't want to disclose intimate details of your life to.
For sure, retailers could surveil your purchases just as easily by reference to your credit/debit card/checking account numbers, but that information is actually protected and not supposed to be maintained.
The article about Starbucks says that someone got fewer deals when they went to Starbucks more frequently. Another way to put it is that when they stop going to Starbucks so often, the company sends them extra deals to try to get them to come back.
But how many deals does Starbucks offer to people who don’t use the app at all? Wouldn’t they end up paying full price all the time? Those are presumably the least price-sensitive customers.
So you save some money by signing up, but you save more money if they somehow think you’re particularly price-sensitive. Just having the card doesn’t mean you always get the best deals. There’s another game you have to play, too.
You could probably save more money by getting a coffee machine.
It reminds me of how every year, the Washington Post tries to raise the price of my subscription, and then I start to cancel it and they give me a discount price. It’s another way of distinguishing customers who are price-sensitive and will walk unless they get a deal.
The article about Kroger’s makes some statements that seem backwards:
This is just an assumption, and it’s the opposite of what Starbucks does. Why would Kroger’s do that, instead of giving more discounts to try to get disloyal customers to come back? We don’t really know what they do, but that seems more logical.
I am skeptical. Wealthy customers are less price-sensitive and more likely to pay more. The whole industry works this way. There are even upscale grocery stores that cater to wealthy people, and they do it by offering fancier foods, not the deep discounts you get at the low end. On the opposite end, in California you can get lower prices by going to Asian grocery stores.
Similarly, airlines do everything they can to get business travelers to pay more.
Price discrimination sometimes works to reduce inequality a little. “Playing the game” is how you show that you care about prices and should get the discount. Standing on principle by not playing the game shows that maybe you’re wealthy enough to care about something else more than saving money.
It’s all rather tedious, which is why some stores advertise “everyday low prices.” But you still have to shop at a store that does that, and you can’t necessarily take their word for it.
It's not just about direct costs to the consumer. It's about behavioral manipulation, non-consensual invasion of privacy (e.g. data resale to third parties), oligopoly tactics that reduce choice and competition...
Here's the research summary source [PDF warning] referenced in the Washington Post article if you care to peruse it.
Generally if a store is advertising that they have low prices, it means that you can get it cheaper elsewhere. They have to pay extra to advertise, after all.
I often see advertisements for Kroger and their cheap store branded items, but in reality the stores they own are actually the most expensive in my area and are roughly the same as Whole Foods.
Here they're much more in the average to slightly cheaper realm, where Schnucks and Hy-Vee or are the higher end and Fresh Market is the wannabe Whole Foods.
Meijer, Walmart, and Aldi take the cheap end. Well and the Mexican groceries.
I use them, it saves me money and I'm good at coupon/app deals and combining them. Yes that's all advertiser data or whatever but frankly I need to take 50 bucks off my bill now, not complain that it should be $50 cheaper for everyone and pay more. ┐( ˘_˘)┌
It's a marketing tactic designed to adjust your purchasing behaviour in their favour. If these programs didn't ultimately fleece you of a little bit more of your money, they wouldn't exist.
Well that is my thoughts, but more recently more and more deals are locked behind them, and I am feeling ripped off if I don’t use one, but also feel like I will if I do.
There's also the cold realization that you and all the other non-members are helping subsidize the people who do sign up.
I struggle with it, too. I can't opt out of the system, and I can't change enough minds that marketing tricks like this wither away. I try to avoid these places, but as you know, it's not easy these days.
In the case of Nectar, you can just pick up a card in the shop and start using it. You don't need to give them any of your information.
I regularly do this when I've forgotten mine. I must have five or six of them at this point, and that's only the ones I haven't lost.
It does mean you don't get the cashback part of the 'deal' but given that's something like 0.25p per pound spent I'm not losing any sleep over it. Especially because I'm so bad at using the Self-scan machines they never trained me on how to use. Stuff is always getting scanned badly. I'm so careless oh no.
Interesting, I didn’t know that you didn’t need to give any details for nectar. Thanks for that, very helpful.
Well, I don't use any loyalty/membership cards.
I just think about it like I do with any "free" service: if you don't pay for it, you are the product.
So either you pay 20coins more for the eggs or you pay the equivalent of 20coins (or more) by the data they get from you.
I'd rather pay in coins.
I think the difference becomes harder to stomach when it's larger though as most of the time on my shops these days the difference is on the order of £10-£20 which comes out to near £400 a year
Agreed, and that is "how they get you" it's the same way of doing business that Google, Facebook, etc have perfected online: by offering a service for free or at a discount where you pay by providing data or access to yourself as a customer.
Just to make it clear: I'm not arguing about right or wrong here, I just stated my point of view on the matter where I, as a privacy minded person, was asked about it.
And I understand I'm privileged enough to be able to make that choice.
(Although I'm quite sure I save more money annually by not buying the things that would be advertised at me, but ofc I don't have the data to back that claim up.)
It also is a choice that ultimately doesn't matter as there isn't any ethical consumption under capitalism (or as I've come to think of it lately: at all. It is not enough to destroy capitalism we also have to stop "consuming" and change our view on how we use the earths resources for food, shelter, healthcare, etc).
Stores here will all scan a generic store card if you ask them to, so you can get the deal price without needing a card of your own. Is that not typical?
Another option is Jenny. 867-5309 in the local area code works for just about any loyalty program.
That's genius! For younger folks, there was an old song where the name and phone numbers are in the lyrics. The number only had 7 digits because area codes weren't a thing yet. Or was it long distance calling not yet a thing hence no need for area codes?
Someone got the reference! The song is apparently called 867-5309/Jenny. I guess it’s a fitting name.
Apparently area codes came about in 1947, but I think phones defaulted to the local code for a long time. I remember it switching to requiring an area code sometime in my lifetime. Maybe it was when we switched from pots (plain old telephone service) to VoIP (voice over ip/internet).
The switch seems to happen when you have enough area codes in a certain area. Mine only switched in the past five-ish years iirc, most of us just dialed them because we're used to cellphones and the ease of being out of area but I didn't technically need to dial them on my VOIP work phone five years ago.
Okay, so first of all, oh gods I'm old now apparently. But I remember using phones in the mid to late 1990s:
Area codes and long distance calling definitely existed by the time the song came out (1981). But you could (maybe still can?) omit the area code when dialing, if it's the same as your own. Since this was before mobile phones were common, approximately everyone's phone number matched the area they lived in, because that's how landlines work. Most phone calls are placed to people in the same area, so this means you'd almost always omit it in practice, so when giving your phone number to local people (or, for example, writing a local person's phone number on a bathroom wall) you'd also omit it.
edit: that other reply was definitely not there when I wrote this. Please enjoy some additional weird 1990s US phone stuff:
I’ve never seen that in the UK. I’ve seen people print a receipt with a code so you click the points later if you forget your loyalty card as an alternative.
I’m in the US - pretty sure it’s a state law here that requires them to do it (or makes it the easiest way to comply).
I bet people don't know about it. While I'm almost always a member of a grocery loyalty program, I have seen other people do it. Not often, but enough. Typically it's, "Oh I forgot my card and I don't remember what phone number it's under!" and then the cashier pulls out a generic loyalty card and scans it cuz it's quicker.
I haven't used rewards cards, but not so much because of privacy reasons.
I pay everything with a credit card and have always assumed, based on very limited research and therefore perhaps wrongly, that each store can connect my purchases at their store and at any affiliate stores through my card ID. As they see exactly what I buy, they should be able to profile me quite thoroughly. Meanwhile, my credit card company sees a wider picture of all the places where I shop and how much I spend, but not the exact items I purchase.
I don't like any of this, and I suppose I could prevent it by using cash, but using a card is convenient.
That is also the reason I don't like rewards cards: I just don't like the hassle. I don't want to hunt for deals, I don't want deals to influence my shopping, and I don't want to remember to scan loyalty cards for points or coupons. I don't want to gamify my shopping. Money is already imaginary enough, loyalty points that stand for money or items are thrice removed from reality.
However, the sad reality is that, like many here have already pointed out, most shops also in my area have continued to maintain artificially (?) high prices after the inflation spike a couple of years ago, and many regular prices are now only available as "member discounts".
So, we have reluctantly subscribed to some loyalty programs since it does save us money. Since I don't want any more apps on my phone than I already have, we have the apps on another phone, and I've just taken a picture of the QR code needed for the checkout and I use that with the machines.
So what it's worth I've had a Tesco Clubcard since long before they started introducing all the insane Clubcard only pricing, back when the earn rates for things like buying petrol were actually good.
Over that time I have managed to do quite well with actually getting something back out of the "points". During their attempt at competing with the like of Argos, I was able to convert the vouchers at some silly rate like 3/4x their "worth" and used that to buy a PS4 for example.
These days though, biggest personal benefit is that you need one for access "scan as you shop". At my local store, the queue to go through at the regular checkouts can still get pretty silly backing into the aisles, but the self scan ones are always outside of the Christmas rush also quiet, so I can go pay and leave with little fuss / waiting around. The exclusion to that being the occasional bag checks, where I need to hang around while a member of staff randomly scans a few things to ensure everything is above board.
If a card is tied to my name/phone number, I wouldn't get it. If it's not related to my identity in any way and just allows the company to track the history of my purchases with my account id, I'd get it if the benefits are good
I'm not very privacy focused, but I've been wondering about making some changes. I would, at a minimum
Some credit cards let you create free secondary card holders. Every store seem to lock the best sales behind these nowadays, I wonder if I should look into the legality of only ever using the secondary in a different name.
They do it in Czech Republic as well. My take is to buy elsewhere in small shops. There is nothing that supermarkets have that small shops don't, maybe you have to visit two or three to get all you need, but with supermarkets having high prices for non-owners of their tracking cards these small shops often come to the same or even lower price. And sometimes they have goods that supermarkets lack. I'm not even talking about supporting ypur smaller shop...
People started to shop at large in supermarkets and abandoning small shops but maybe their time is coming back.