Trader Joe's Says They 'Don't Track Our Customers' Like 'Regular Grocery Stores' Do
The 'Inside Trader Joe's' podcast hosts dished on how the grocery store invests in products and employees rather than "robots"
Trader Joe’s lets their customers’ purchases do the talking.
In the latest mini-episode of the Inside Trader Joe’s podcast, co-hosts Tara Miller and Matt Sloan explained why the grocery store chain doesn’t get information about their fans from screens, robots or techy retail media.
Retail media, which Sloan defined as “marketing to consumers at or near the point of purchase or point of choice between competing brands or products,” can show up as in-store or online advertising, loyalty programs and sampling. The hosts explained that the only one that Trader Joe’s invests in is in-store taste tests.
Miller said, “I hear retail media, and where my brain goes directly is to those screens that are ubiquitous now in most grocery stores,” adding that they are found at registers, shelves, freezer cases and even “robots that are flowing through the store.”
The hosts continued that those screens were once just something to look at but now are used to target products to consumers.
“Now those screens [are] really empowered by data,” Sloan said. He described how our smartphones track our location and search activity, which is fed to advertisements. “Through something known as geotargeting and geofencing, those screens in regular supermarkets, they're going to all of a sudden know that you are just looking at vanilla ice cream and they might advertise a chocolate sauce to you,” he added. Miller said, “We don’t track our customers’ shopping habits, their shopping patterns, their shopping choices, their shopping data. Basically, we just don’t track our customers.”
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Rather than paying for targeted ads, “screens” or “robots,” — which the costs of “get borne out somewhere, most often at the regular grocery store in the prices on products,” said Sloan — the retailer puts the money into developing new products and adding employees. Miller added that they are often asked how they know what people are buying without using that technology and explained that they just “look at our shelves and we look at what we sell.”
“Listen, there might be some folks who are perfectly fine with that and think that's great,” Miller said of other stores tracking their customers’ activities. “Within Trader Joe's, we would just prefer that you have a conversation with one of our crew members.”
Other episodes of Inside Trader Joe’s have given fans an inside look at some of the store’s quirks, like what it means when cashiers ring bells, or details on how to get a location in your town.
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