A mechanism or tactic · 1990 · Retail
The stamp card
Buy nine, get the tenth. A card, a punch, a visible record of loyalty, in the customer's hand.
The most parasocial object in the world and nobody has ever said so. It is a small, portable, accumulating record that a person chooses to carry around, which is functionally an anniversary counter for a café.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Manipulation. One-sided attachment engineered for somebody else's benefit. Paid intimacy, parasocial persuasion, sasaeng, grief extraction, the streak. The lane that pays the bills and the lane that causes the most harm, frequently at the same time.
Where it sits
1950 1950-1999 · 1990 1999
Provenance · 1 source record(s)
- unverifiedThe stamp card is a measurable instrument, not a novelty: supermarket loyalty card data has been used to quantify the operational effect of promotions on households rather than on aggregate sales, which is the point at which a discount becomes a profileFelgate, M., Fearne, A., DiFalco, S., & Martinez, M. G. (2012). Using Supermarket Loyalty Card Data to Analyse the Impact of Promotions. International Journal of Market Research, 54(2), 221-240. ↗
Connected · 2 out, 2 in
Reported as a story
It sits in