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S Group has been collecting detailed shopping data for years
through its popular loyalty bonus card, which is held by 3.7
million consumers in Finland, whose population is 5.5 million.
"Especially for our younger customers the opportunity to track
their own consumption can be a crucially important reason to use
our green (bonus) card, even more important than the bonus
itself," spokesman Veli-Pekka Aari said on Tuesday.
While S Group's competitors are also eyeing opportunities to
collect and use data on people's shopping habits to personalise
their advertisement efforts, Aari said the idea of giving out it
to customers was the group's own.
"We may well be the first in the world to give customers access
to data on their consumption with this precision."
S Group, a co-operative owned by its customers, had a 45.9
percent share of the Finnish retail market in 2017, while it
also runs Finland's largest petrol station chain, department
stores, hotels and restaurants.
While customers are able to look up what they have spent over
the last 12 months on product groups such as beef, yogurt or
beer, together with their shopping locations and usual shopping
hours, the information could become more detailed.
"A consumer could check how much, say sugar, the purchased
products have contained altogether, and then if they want,
compare their own sugar consumption with that of other
households of the same size," Aari said.
Some consumers have been concerned by a lack of privacy within
the bonus system, although S Group said it was giving customers
not only access to their shopping data but also increased
control over its use.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen, editing by Gwladys Fouche and
Alexander Smith)
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