Loyalty Cards

I had a history teacher for two years in high school who always had a story to tell. One was particularly on his wife who loved to shop. At least once every couple of weeks, she would come home and go on and on about how she "saved" so much money at the store. He would say, "the only reason you bought any of these items is because they were on sale, or because you had a discount card." I could not agree with him more. The whole idea behind loyalty cards, or discount cards, is to buy more of the store's products. Essentially, you are not saving money, you are spending money. If you never had a discount card for certain products, you would never buy them. So, no, I do not believe our purchasing privacy is worth a discount. In my mind, I believe the whole "discount idea" is just a huge scam to reel in customers into making them believe you are saving when you are really spending. I know it is difficult to keep one's privacy in the society we live in today, but, if there were no discount cards it would be one less thing to worry about. I do see the positives that come out of these cards to aid in their marketing tools demographically.  However, there are multiple alternatives in finding your target audience and I just feel discount cards should not be one of them. For example, surveys could be handed in and out of stores. You could also have surveys online, or, simply have employees casually ask quick questions that could benefit the business for research. Again, there are many different ways to go about researching for your business, and discount cards, in my mind, should be banned from the American society.