Business's monitoring consumer shopping

I wanted to like the idea of private business's logging what we buy to provide a better experience for us; the concept is really cool. When it actually happens however, it comes off as a little creepy.

Today we received a series of coupons in the mail for Fry's Marketplace (Kroger, FredMeyer, Smiths owened) and every coupon we received was for a product that is on our shopping list at least once a month. Every coupon we will be able to use this weekend when we go grocery shopping.

It works. Monitoring what we buy and sending us coupons entices us to return. We tend to shop at Walmart because of the cheaper prices and larger selection. Today however my wife said she wanted to go use the coupons at Fry's instead of shopping at Walmart. So we will go spend our money at Fry's.

I like receiving the coupons for products we use on a regular basis. It's pretty cool. At the same time, when it finally sinks in that they are monitoring what you are buying, it gets kind of creepy. Very much like what Google does with their targeted ads.

After seeing this today, I'm even more on the fence. Again, it's great because we benifit from it. At the expense of sacrificing the privacy of what you're buying at the stores.