Epiqure: Is it worth the $99 Join Fee (p.a.)?

[VPS]

I made one purchase last year - it was a mixed case and I checked and thought it was good value and just got an email saying my membership was due for renewal but because I'd made a purchase I got comp membership so looks like you only need one purchase - now all you need is that free join offer

 

[medhead]

The answer is: tesco.

Qantas - just like any other big company with a brain invests heavily in business intelligence.
For example (this is a surface scratching example it goes WAY deeper than this): You buy a 2005 shiraz something something for $100. While this purchase doesn't mean much to you - to Qantas it provides the following data:

- You're happy to spend $100 on 1 bottle (shows you're a subjective purchaser)
- The time between looking at a product and purchasing: (shows how comfortable you are purchasing products online)
- If you buy wines that are tagged internally as 'gift wines', they know you use the site for gifts... Guess what type of marketing you'll receive (hint: NOT for gifts!)
- QFF already has data on who is in your "family" (based on points/upgrades/phone calls etc..), they can use your wine purchase in data combined with your family data to get a very basic profie of your family tree's alcohol purchasing habits.
- The type of wine you buy means a lot... if you're buying the same bottle each month, QFF may link peiple that buy a certain bottle are much more likely to pay for a wine club subscription. Or people that buy xx_ wine are always over 50 years old - which opens up MANY opportunites to use/sell that data.

Back to tesco (who is the poster child for BI going back into the early 1990s') - here's an example of how 1 purchase can make the company a lot of money: How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did - Forbes

Also related to data is how much product Qantas can push to different demographics.
For example this store helps increase their sales volumes - which helps QF leverage more favourable pricing for their already X/million bottles of wine each year. Driving more cost efficiencies for the group. We could look at alcohol similar to onboard duty free sales which are heavily subsidized (to near $0) by the brand. Limitless possibilities to use the data to extract more revenue.

Data is the future and nobody is safe

Like I said "that they don't already have". It is also my responsibility to decide how I react to marketing.

 

[Champo]

I joined for $99 when Epicure was first established and received a bottle of Wolf Blass Black Label which cost about the joining fee at any other outlet, however, I have yet to see any offers of wine with any discounted value. Anyone that thinks they have got a bargain have never been to Dan Murphy's or 1st Choice