The apps aren’t just discount booklets. They are sophisticated tools for data collection and behavioral control. The “gift” is merely the bait.

1. The Transparent Shopping Cart: The End of Anonymity

Previously, cash purchases at the supermarket were one of the last anonymous spaces in our daily lives. The retailer didn’t know who had bought the milk, the chocolate, and the laundry detergent.

With the app, this changes radically.

As soon as you scan your personal QR code at the checkout, the entire shopping cart is inextricably linked to you. The supermarket now knows:

• WHAT you buy (brand names, generic, organic, vegan, alcohol, diapers).
• WHEN you shop (Friday evening? Monday morning?).
• HOW OFTEN you shop (weekly, daily shop?).
• WHERE you shop (always at the same store? Or do you switch?).
• HOW you react to prices (Do you only buy product X when it’s on sale?).

Over several months, this data builds into a highly detailed profile. The retailer knows whether you are single, have a family, live a health-conscious lifestyle, are short on cash, or tend to make impulse purchases.

2. The goal: Behavioral management instead of saving

This data is not collected out of curiosity. They are the foundation for personalized marketing, whose sole aim is to maximize your “Customer Lifetime Value”—that is, the total amount of money you spend with this chain over your lifetime.

• Push for Own Brands: Have you always bought the expensive name-brand soda? The app will give you an “exclusive” discount on the almost identical, but more profitable for the retailer, own brand. You save 50 cents, and the retailer earns an extra euro thanks to the higher margin.
• Test Price Elasticity: Person A is offered chips at a 30% discount because the app knows they wouldn’t normally buy them. Person B, who buys the chips regularly anyway, doesn’t see this discount. Why would they? They buy them regardless.
• Increase Frequency: Haven’t bought anything in a while? Suddenly, you receive an “Just for You!” coupon for your favorite product, valid for only 48 hours. Goal: To get you to abandon your planned shopping trip to the competitor and immediately return to “your” store.

Triggering impulse purchases: The app lures you in with a discount on milk (a basic product). But once you’re in the store, you “just quickly” pick up some chocolate, wine, and cheese – at full price, of course.

The idea that we can shop more cheaply through apps is a psychological trap.

1. The discount is the price for your data

The 10% coupon for the yogurt isn’t a saving. It’s the payment the supermarket gives you for your complete data set from this purchase. This data set is worth many times more to marketing, strategic planning, and negotiations with manufacturers than what the yogurt discount costs the company.

2. The illusion of saving

Apps use “gamification” elements (e.g., digital scratch cards, “You saved €4.50 today!”) to give us a sense of accomplishment. We feel clever because we’ve “outsmarted” the system.

In reality, these apps often lead us to spend more money. They entice us to buy things we wouldn’t have put in our cart without the “exclusive” discount.

3. The Mixed Calculation

Does anyone seriously believe that corporations absorb their millions in losses through discounts? No. The discounts that “app users” receive are already factored into the overall prices of all products.

In other words: Customers who don’t use the app and protect their privacy are essentially paying for the app users’ discounts through higher regular prices. The app is the key to (perhaps) getting the price that was normal before the app was introduced.

Supermarket apps are not charity events, but rather the spearhead of data-driven commerce. They transform the customer from an anonymous buyer into a precisely analyzed and controllable consumer object.

We don’t get anything “for free.” We trade our anonymity, our data, and a piece of our free will for a 50-cent discount on pasta that we might not have bought at all without the app.