I'm an avowed fan of Costco. I absolutely love shopping there and it is a sign of my adoration that I think my fraternity brother Kirk is a rock star because he's a buyer for Costco. Another of our fraternity brothers is an actor with a recurring role on the original CSI (he's Archie in the lab), but I honestly think I'd ask Kirk for an autograph first. If nothing else I'd ask to trade jobs with him before anyone else I know. So yes I love Costco.
Today we received a robo-call from Costco, but unlike the calls I got from John McCain this one was welcome. Their records showed that we'd purchased Clif Bars in a certain time period and they wanted to inform us that Clif Bars were being voluntarily recalled in connection with the peanut butter salmonella scare. In other words they'd scoured their database and found any members who had purchased Clif Bars from them and then called them to let them know that they should dump those Cliff Bars. They also provided a way to get information directly from Clif Bars about the recall.
Obviously not all retailers can do something like this. They don't all have a membership database like Costco, but what's interesting to me is that many of them do have loyalty programs like Food Lion's MVP program. I'm wondering if they have the capacity to mine their MVP data and see if any members have purchased tainted products and then contact those customers? I doubt it, but even if they did I don't know that they'd actually think to do what Costco has done.
Did I mention I love Costco?
