The Boston Globe this morning reports that “in an effort to pressure Stop & Shop to change its pricing in certain community stores, youth organizers with the Hyde Square Task Force in Jamaica Plain are calling on the grocery chain to use its consumer data profits to eliminate the price inequities the group uncovered in a study last year.
“The group’s demand comes nearly a year after it probed the effects of inflation on low-income families, and found that a shopping cart of items at their neighborhood Stop & Shop in Jackson Square cost $34, about 21 percent more than a similar list at a Stop & Shop in suburban Dedham.”
According to the Globe, “In the letter sent to the Quincy-based supermarket company Tuesday, the task force suggested the chain’s parent, Ahold Delhaize, use the money it made from selling consumer data to address Stop & Shop’s existing price disparities … Ahold Delhaize, based in the Netherlands, reported last June that it had reached half of its roughly $1.1 billion goal of selling online advertisements and information on consumer data. It is unclear how much the company earns from individually collecting and monetizing shopper habits, but Ahold Delhaize chief executive Frans Muller told Reuters at the time it uses its profits to keep food prices low in spite of inflation.”
But not, apparently, everywhere.
“Since Stop & Shop is making millions from capturing and selling private and personal information of its customers, we would like to respectfully request that Stop & Shop use these profits to create price equity across your chain,” the task force letter reads. “Families in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Dorchester and Mission Hill would save thousands of dollars per year if they paid the same grocery prices as families in Dedham.”
The Globe writes that “following the group’s initial study and the media attention that came with it, Stop & Shop met with the Hyde Square Task Force teens to discuss the grocery chain’s business model. The corporation pointed to some of its efforts to address food insecurity in Boston neighborhoods, including opening two pantries at Dimock Health Center and Roxbury Community College last year.
“Nevertheless, task force members said they left with many unanswered questions. Namely, the company’s handling of consumer data. When the group asked questions about the data during the meeting, ‘the company’s lawyer forcefully ordered the conversation to stop immediately,’ the group said in their letter.”
The Globe writes that Stop & Shop “has called the study ‘misleading,’ and said it does not factor an area’s socioeconomic makeup when setting prices, and instead weighs factors such as ‘rent, labor costs, store size, and store offerings’.”
KC’s View:
As I said last year when this story first broke, I am immensely impressed with these kids – they see situations that they view an inequities, and they are taking appropriate actions to try and address them.
Not surprisingly, Stop & Shop has been ham-fisted in dealing with the task force. I’ll give the company some credit – in the beginning, it wouldn’t even meet with the kids or engage with the Globe on the questions raised. It sounds like eventually they did, but pretty much went into defensive mode.
Last year, I wrote this:
If Stop & Shop actually sat down with these kids and explained why prices are higher in a poorer neighborhood than in a richer one, that actually might have stimulated an important societal discussion among them and their peers, one that might have created a conversation in their schools and communities that might have addressed the problem in a meaningful way.
They, in essence, could’ve said to the kids: This is business. Not personal.
But that didn’t happen. The opportunity was there for the kids to be enlightened and for Stop & Shop to connect with a portion of its customer base to which it is demonstrably condescending.
I actually think that the task force makes an interesting point about using revenue from consumer data sales to drive down prices in areas where costs might be higher. But I suspect they’ll be frustrated, though – that data is used to feather the corporate nest and improve the bottom line.
Stop & Shop maintains that it is possible for consumers to opt out of being tracked, so I have a suggestion for the task force. If you’re not satisfied with the company’s responses, start a grass roots campaign to get customers to opt out of being tracked. It’ll be hard, but you might get some traction if you try to put a dent in what Stop & Shop is able to sell. You’ll also get a lot of earned media coverage, because this is the kind of story that appeals to the media, precisely because it addresses the larger issue of how customers’ information is being sold and used.
The post Youth Organizers Keep Pushing Stop & Shop To Address Pricing Inequities appeared first on MNB.
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