From its start as a 19th-century mail-order firm, to its heyday on Main Street and in suburban malls, and from its late 20th-century reorientation toward credit and financial products to its attempted return to its original retail identity, Sears has mirrored the ups and downs of the American economy. It was a distribution arm of industrial America. It drove the suburbanizing wedge of postwar shopping malls. It helped atomize the industrial economy through manufacturer outsourcing in the 1970s and 1980s. It played a key role in the diffusion of mass consumer culture and commercial values. For better and for worse, Sears is a symbol of American capitalism.

By the early 20th century, Sears already was a household name across the United States, one that represented rural thrift and industry as well as material abundance and consumer pleasures. The company was founded as a modest mail-order retailer of watches in the 1880s by Richard W. Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck. Julius Rosenwald, a Chicago clothing merchant who became a partner in the firm in 1895, directed its rapid growth, expanding into new products and ever-broader territory. Mail-order firms like Sears were able to penetrate underserved rural areas by leaning on new infrastructure, such as the railroads that linked far-flung regions of the country. Government regulation also aided the company’s growth, with the Rural Free Delivery Act of 1896 underwriting its distribution chain by expanding mail routes in rural areas.

Sears, Roebuck letterhead from 1907 featured the mail-order company’s state-of-the-art distribution center, a symbol of its retail dominance. Image courtesy of Sears, Roebuck & Co/Wikimedia Commons.

In an era when print media reigned supreme, Sears dominated the rural retail market through its huge catalog, an amazing work of product advertising, consumer education, and corporate branding. Titled the Book of Bargains and later, The Great Price Maker, the famous Sears catalog expanded in the 1890s from featuring watches and jewelry to including everything from buggies and bicycles to sporting goods and sewing machines. It educated millions of shoppers about mail-order procedures, such as shipping, cash payment, substitutions and returns. It used simple and informal language and a warm, welcoming tone. “We solicit honest criticism more than orders,” the 1908 catalog stated, emphasizing customer satisfaction above all else. Sears taught Americans how to shop.

Sears also demonstrated how to run a business. Cutting costs and tightly controlling distribution fueled its rise to power. The company built a massive Chicago distribution complex in 1906, which occupied three million square feet of floor space. A full-page illustration of the plant, in all its bright redbrick glory, graced the back of the Sears catalog. Any customer could see how his merchandise was received and held, how his orders were filled and shipped out, and where the catalog itself was published. The distribution center was its own best advertisement; among the largest in the world, it was a symbol of the mail-order company’s dominance.

The company innovated in other ways, too. Bricks-and-mortar retailers today have to contend with new consumer habits brought about by e-commerce. Similarly, mail-order firms like Sears faced potential loss of their markets as the nation urbanized 100 years ago and entered the automobile age. Sears navigated the challenge brilliantly when it opened its first department store in Chicago in 1925. Under the managerial leadership of Gen. Robert E. Wood, who had formerly worked with mail-order competitor Montgomery Ward, Sears initiated a rapid expansion outside of urban centers. By 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression, it operated more than 300 department stores.

In 1948, Ruth Parrington, a librarian at the Chicago Public Library, studied a Sears catalog from 1902. Photo courtesy of Associated Press.

Growth continued even during the economic downturn, because Sears wisely championed an aesthetic of thrift. The chain made its name selling dependable staples such as socks and underwear and sheets and towels, rather than fashion items like those found in traditional department stores such as Marshall Field’s in Chicago or John Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia or New York. Sears outlets were spare, catering to customers who were interested in finding good value, to meet practical needs. By the end of the Depression decade, the number of stores had almost doubled.

After World War II, still under Wood’s leadership, Sears continued to open new stores across North America, in the bustling new shopping centers populating the expanding suburban landscape. In the United States, the number of Sears stores passed 700 by the mid-1950s. The firm also expanded across the borders north and south, opening its first Mexico City store in 1947 and moving into Canada in 1952 (incorporating with a Canadian mail-order firm to become Simpson-Sears). Sears benefited from being a pioneer chain in a landscape of largely independent department stores. Along with J.C. Penney, it became a standard shopping mall anchor. Together, the two chains, along with Montgomery Ward, captured 43 percent of all department store sales by 1975.

Sears wouldn’t really lose any footing until the 1970s, when new challenges emerged. Skyrocketing inflation meant low-price retailers such as Target, Kmart and Walmart, all founded in 1962, lured new customers. The market became bifurcated as prosperous upper-middle class shoppers turned to more luxurious traditional department stores, while bargain seekers found lower prices at the discounters than at Sears.

Women’s and girls’ underskirts featured in the 1902 Sears Roebuck catalog sold from $1.18. Image courtesy of Edward Kitch/Associated Press.

In 1991, Walmart overtook Sears as the nation’s largest retailer. As big box stores began to dominate the country, the department store industry responded through mergers, reorganization and experimentation with the department store category itself. Sears was no exception. The company took many different tacks under a series of problematic leaders, losing sight in the process of its traditional niche, which it ceded to discounters. Sears moved into insurance and financial services. Its credit card business, for example, accounted for 60 percent of its profits at the turn of the 21st century. In 2003, however, it tried returning to its retail core, selling its credit and financial business to Citigroup for $32 billion.

There is a tendency to look at Sears’s decline, and the potential loss of a grand icon of American business, with fond nostalgia. This would be a mistake. Sears embodied many of the uglier aspects of American capitalism, too. Many times, the firm’s management pushed back against forces that benefited workers. Sears tried to undermine organized labor, successfully resisting it even though several other traditional flagship department stores had unionized by the 1940s and 1950s. Company leaders resisted 20th-century progressive social movements that sought economic equality for African Americans and women. Like other department stores, Sears contributed both to structural and daily acts of racism, against customers and workers. African-American boycotts against Sears in the 1930s, for example, exposed racist hiring practices; in the late 1960s, welfare-rights activists revealed the firm’s discriminatory credit policies. Gender inequality was deeply entrenched in its work structure—and challenged, prominently and unsuccessfully, in the famous 1986 “Sears case,” which emerged from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint concerning discrimination against women, who had been passed over for lucrative commissioned sales jobs in traditionally-male departments.

All of it, good and bad, reflects our nation’s struggle to adapt to larger economic, political, and cultural forces. For historians like myself, who see business as a social institution through which to view and critique the past, the end of Sears will mean more than just one less place to buy my socks.

The post How Sears Industrialized, Suburbanized, and Fractured the American Economy appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But Sport Chalet had been different, in a way that embodied Southern California, and drew in people like me—athletes and outdoorspeople who needed a reliable source for sometimes hard-to-find gear and expertise.

One story goes that Sport Chalet founder Norbert Olberz, began his mountaineering and ski supply store by loaning customers equipment and asking them to return it, at which point they would pay a fair rate for the privilege. The first store was a converted furniture store on Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada, just down the mountain from some of Southern California’s busiest hiking trails. A second location soon followed, across the street in an old supermarket, where the dive shop was housed in the meat locker. Third was a former gas station nearby that, presumably, after Olberz decided to charge fees upfront, rented ski equipment.

This motley campus would be unimaginable today. But for the inexperienced merchant in 1959 it seemed a reasonable approach. Sport Chalet oozed idiosyncrasy. It was years ahead of other retailers in selling and renting oddities such as mountaineering gear, scuba equipment, and surfboards. That adventurous, spirit endured for decades. The centerpiece of the original store was a 20-foot-tall fiberglass snow-painted mountain peak that demonstrated “Cliff Cabanas” and “Portaledges,” the cantilevered sleeping bag harness system used by extreme rock climbers.

In the 1980s, when I first encountered Sport Chalet as an outdoors-minded kid in the San Gabriel Valley, that feel was the “closer” for me, a place that had anything I could ever want without it feeling sterile or anonymous.

I soon learned that the people who worked there actually used the things they sold! Sport Chalet was the retail equivalent of the local watering hole. Half the time a visit there was a visit, not necessarily a purchase. With the more unusual equipment came the conversations. Where was the customer going on his or her next trip into the outdoors? Had they been there before? Much of it predicated on adventure, not just a new pair of Nikes.

About 15 years ago, I was shopping for a new pair of hiking boots for a backpacking trip in the Sierras. Quickly I was interrogated, albeit in a friendly tone. “Are you going to be crossing streams? If so, that changes everything—you won’t want those, your feet will freeze. Unless you’re going later in the season. And ignore the advertising by the manufacturer, they’re all water repellent.” I was chastened, but educated and well prepared.

As a Sport Chalet loyalist, I was barely aware that other sports retailers existed. Yes, in a fit of madness, I once bought an air rifle at Big 5—and the guilt still haunts me 28 years later.

Someone can buy a basketball, a baseball glove, workout clothes, or weights anywhere, but the SC people actually knew what they were selling, knew how it worked, and why you should or, crucially, should not buy it. Employees were assigned certain departments and had expertise in their areas.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the scuba department where Sport Chalet staffers have served as retailers, instructors, dive masters, dive club sponsors, and dive buddies since the store’s inception. In scuba, Sport Chalet eventually had official authority. It has been the largest single certifier of scuba divers in California for decades.

Perhaps nowhere would expertise be more critical. If soccer cleats don’t fit, you exchange them; you can trade in the purple tracksuit for whatever is more fashionable. But buy the wrong-sized buoyancy control device and it’s a possible trip to the hyperbaric chamber. Wrong regulator or improper instruction of how to use it, say hi to the chamber staff again and say goodbye to a few thousand dollars.

Fifteen years ago, I enrolled in Sport Chalet’s Open Water Diver course, the entry-level scuba certification program. It was my deepest connection to the place, and I still treasure the experience. One instructor of mine had been with the company 20 years and brought with him years of experience as a Navy underwater explosive ordnance disposal diver, more than sufficient for this wandering underwater tourist. Other dive staff had years of commercial diving experience, and all were dedicated to sharing their love of the ocean. I witnessed a similar worker loyalty in the dive shop itself, where several employees stayed on for years.

Things started to change a few years ago when their flagship store in La Cañada moved from the converted supermarket to a brand new, big-box monstrosity a block away.

No longer was the dive shop in the old market’s meat locker; it was suddenly adjacent to the on-site pool. Okay, to be fair, that pool was a nice touch. The new place felt a step closer to Acme Sporting Goods, but it remained our one-stop shop for anything athletic. And as it finishes off a going-out-of-business sale, it’s still the only retail store where I recognize staff year after year. There won’t be its equivalent again. Amazon has seen to that.

Yes, it’s true that we can find anything SC had online, but that is cold comfort. I will miss the conversations and human connections that SC provided. Goodbye to Mr. Olberz’s faithful former furniture store.

The post Bon Voyage, Sport Chalet appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Nearly a century later, Ralphs’ creation has become a quintessential institution of American capitalism, representing national abundance and insatiable material desire. Yet for such a central part of daily life, Americans know very little about how the supermarket as a retailing concept came to be. Nor do we fully understand how Los Angeles’ retail scene continues to shape our edible future.

Although other grocers would claim to have invented the supermarket concept, the credit belongs to Ralphs. He already owned a chain of “drive-in” groceries attached to gas stations, which offered items from flour to canned vegetables. Drive-ins first appeared in Los Angeles during the 1910s as a solution to one of the more complex problems of early 20th-century retailing: automobiles. As the cost of purchasing a car fell because of Henry Ford’s assembly lines, all municipalities, regardless of size, struggled to deal with basic questions like parking, and ensuring that horses and street vendors could coexist with the new technologies. This problem was especially acute in Los Angeles, where as many as one-quarter of the city’s residents owned an automobile by 1920. (At the time, barely one in 20 New Yorkers could say the same).

Consumers struggled to use their cars to run daily errands—there were simply too many. At the beginning of the 20th century, shopping was broken up among different vendors. One would get their vegetables from a standalone green grocer, their bread from an independent baker, and their flour from chain groceries like the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (which was, at the time, America’s largest retailer, primarily selling dry goods). People could not simply park a car in a crowded urban neighborhood and buy everything they wanted at once.

The drive-in grocery tried to balance this by pairing stores with the architectural partner to the automobile, the gas station. Drive-ins were marketed to the affluent white middle class, who had an overriding concern for cleanliness and respectability. But some white Angelenos struggled with the reality that they were purchasing their food in a glorified gas station. Persuading those shoppers to buy meat or apples only a few feet from mechanics performing oil changes or drivers filling up trucks with gasoline was no easy feat. Some grocers, especially Ralphs, tried to distract shippers by adding new services like butcher counters and baked goods displays. Others used gaudy architecture—Los Angeles drive-ins frequently included features like Spanish-inspired façades or windmills inspired by Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

The conflict between convenience and respectability gave birth to the first supermarket as Ralphs new store combined many of the features of a drive-in without any of the drawbacks.

At almost 10,000 square feet, the new property was much larger than Ralphs’ drive-ins, offering a larger selection of produce, meat, and dry goods in sizeable departments. Most importantly, the new store was built as a stand-alone, warehouse-like structure beside a large parking lot. Unlike grocery stores, it was not tucked into residential neighborhoods or attached to other commercial structures.

Ralphs architects were keenly aware that they had embarked on a unique project, and designed the property to give routine shopping some of the drama of the stylish department stores downtown. The supermarket stood as a bridge between the urban core and the suburban home. The home economics columnist for the Hollywood Daily Citizen, Harriet Burdsal, captured this mood, comparing Ralphs’ creation to a “marketplace of Rome, where Phoenicians came to peddle their bright silks and bits of treasure from afar.”

Soon, Ralphs had imitators across Los Angeles and eventually the entire United States. Supermarket retailing proved to be an ideal fit for Great Depression-era consumer culture, though in unexpected ways. In the early 1930s, East Coast retailers took Ralphs’ concept of a stand-alone food emporium and combined it with discount shopping, opening what were effectively warehouses selling cheap food to beleaguered working class consumers. In effect, these stores were retail barns, often set up inside disused warehouses and factories and stuffed with items bought from cash-starved distributions desperate to move stock. Often, this meant that auto parts and basic housewares shared shelf space with potatoes and celery, reviving some of the tensions that led to Ralphs opening his first supermarket.

Stringent price regulation also drove the shift. During the early 1930s, federal and state governments put in place a series of new laws meant to regulate big business. This included directives on pricing and licensing fees based on how many properties a company owned both nationally and in a particular market. Established grocery corporations turned to the supermarket concept to skirt these regulations and recapture customers lost to other, more innovative retailers. Foremost in the minds of those making the transition was the brute economics behind closing hundreds of properties subject to heavy taxes and burdensome regulations and opening only a few, streamlined stores in their place. New supermarket chains would thus be subject to less oversight and able to contribute less into public coffers.

The biggest of new supermarket operators was the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company—otherwise known at A&P—the Wal-Mart of its time. At the beginning of the 1930s, A&P owned more than 15,000 grocery stores nationwide but these properties were sadly outdated, offering few of the conveniences of Ralphs or the saving of East Coast warehouse stores. Sales declined from nearly $1.2 billion in 1929 to only $650 million in 1936. Some executives in the company worried that the retailer was dying. Hoping to reinvigorate the business, A&P’s president decided to shutter thousands of his properties and reopen some as supermarkets, modeled closely after the retail palaces built by Ralphs in Los Angeles. There were perhaps no more than 300 supermarkets in the United States in 1937 when A&P began this transition, almost all of them in Southern California; by 1940, there were as many as 8,000, all over the country. A&P owned half, building stores in cities like New York and Philadelphia inspired by Los Angeles’s retail scene.

The Los Angeles model was especially appealing to companies like A&P because of the ways that Ralphs and other local retailers tied the supermarket to the social aspirations and culinary tastes of the city’s suburbanizing white middle class. Looking for a sanitized and highly curated environment, homemakers flooded stores, especially after World War II, drawn in by the promises of modernity and abundance.

The habits of Los Angeles consumers still influence the way all Americans purchase their food. In only a few months, Whole Foods will open one of the first of its value-oriented stores, called 365, in the city’s hip Silver Lake neighborhood. Primarily aimed at cash-strapped but socially conscious millennials, these stores will offer some of the products Whole Foods is famous for, such as organic meats and specialty produce, along with a wider range of everyday consumer items priced below the items found at Whole Foods.

Unlike other possible test beds, Los Angeles offers the sort of economic and cultural diversity lacking in cities like New York or San Francisco. Alongside the Silver Lake hipsters are the remains of working class enclaves whose residents faithfully patronize more mainstream options like the ageless Ralphs (now owned by large Kroger corporation).

Ironically, Los Angeles is perhaps the last major American city that has not seen widespread gentrification and rising rents push out low-income residents. (Compare it to New York here.) This has forced retailers in Los Angeles to find ways to satisfy groups of people seeking bargains instead of higher-end, often more environmentally conscious, products. If the 365 store can draw those shoppers in alongside the tight-jeans set, it would transform a brand thought of as “whole paycheck” into something that appeals to a larger portion of the American population.

If successful, this new concept will eventually find a place in communities across the United States. This will only happen though, after Los Angeles shoppers have their say.

The post Why the Supermarket Was Born in Los Angeles appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

When I tell people at cocktail parties what I do, they’re always curious. “You’re a namer-of-things? That sounds like fun. Tell me more,” they say, seemingly surprised that it’s an actual job.

In fact, the profession has grown in the last 15 years or so with the explosion of entrepreneurs and startups that need to name everything from products and services to websites and apps. “Verbal identity” is at the core of every product launch, and it includes not just names but slogans and taglines.

I’ve written for a variety of industries: entertainment, aerospace, architecture, hospitality, and real estate. I once wrote titillating titles and captivating catalog copy for lingerie retailer Frederick’s of Hollywood. For more than 15 years, I worked for toy manufacturer Mattel.

These days, I’m a naming consultant hired by branding agencies to tackle projects for clients that have included a faith-based financial institution, an online investment service, wine marketed to women, and a new blood transfusion technology. I’ve coined quite a few cute names. For example, City Block is a note cube with a city map printed on its side. Then there’s HandJive—fashion gloves designed for cyclists.

When I get hired to name a product, the branding agency provides me with a briefing document that outlines the client’s business strategy, identifies the competition, and suggests preferred directions, themes, or language. Then I go to town. I get into a naming zone. I typically start the day with a walk for fresh air and ideas. I window-shop and take note of company names or clever taglines (like Gap’s “Fall into our sale”). I stop at the neighborhood newsstand, scan the magazine covers, and flip through the pages if I have time. I hang out on Twitter, where I connect with other word nerds and tweet about names. (Seatylock, a bicycle seat that converts into a heavy-duty bicycle lock, is a recent favorite.)

I’m often one of several namers working on a tight deadline—anywhere from just 24 hours to a few days—to generate as many as 200 names. With luck and persistence, a short list of top contenders is presented to the client.

The work requires staying on task—or going off on tangents. The tools of the trade go beyond Roget’s Thesaurus. I peruse foreign-language dictionaries, as well as a rhyming dictionary, visual thesaurus, and the Oxford English Dictionary to study a word’s historical origins. If I’m looking for a three-letter word, I can search wordfind.com.

Successful naming demands focus, linguistic alchemy, and midnight oil. The creative process of naming is always tempered by legal scrutiny to ensure that a name doesn’t already exist. It can be tricky: A name may be available as a URL or to register as a limited liability company, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can be used to market goods or services. My clients—mostly small businesses and startups—hire trademark attorneys to register and protect the names that I’ve come up with for them.

I worked for Mattel during the period when the Internet took off; names that included the word “girl” were often already taken by porn websites. The company, of course, had to be very protective of its brand. And because the toys were sold around the world, names that included words that didn’t need to be translated were popular: “Le Weekend” and “Chic” were favorites.

Research is easier than when I started thanks to companies that allow you to search and register domain names. But it can be difficult to find a name that hasn’t already been claimed. Domain squatters (individuals or businesses that register a URL to sell it for profit) also tend to snatch up good names. One common solution to this problem is to leave out a letter: See Flickr or Tumblr.

My parents tell me I was born for this occupation. As a little kid, I was verbal, inquisitive, and imaginative, demanding we name the dishes my mom tossed together with leftovers—even if it was as simple as “chicken surprise” or, for variety, “chicken delight.”

Even then, I paid attention to the names of beauty products. I blushed when my mom revealed she was wearing Revlon’s “Naked Pink” nail polish to a PTA meeting. That naughty nomenclature set the bar in the beauty industry. Today, nail polish manufacturer OPI has hands-down cornered the market with its quirky, clever names. My top pick for a pedicure is their classic “I’m Not Really a Waitress” red. Rule No. 1 of my profession: A name should be memorable.

I earned a B.A. in journalism, which groomed me to write compelling news headlines. A good name is just like a good headline. Engaging. Urgent. Telegraphic.

My first job in advertising was in-house copy chief for the L.A. retail institution Aaron Brothers Art and Framing, where my wordplay worked to sell stuff: “Discover a framed poster of King Tut at a very pharaoh price.” When the store introduced a new line of picture frames, I was instructed to “call it something,” and the line became “Moderne.” My career as a namer was born.

In 1990, I jumped at the chance to tap into my inner child and took a job as packaging copywriter for Mattel. Over the course of more than 15 years, I produced countless descriptions and taglines, and hundreds of names, for toys. Most were aligned with traditional gender roles: testosterone-tinged for Hot Wheels, cuddly and sweet for baby dolls, and trendy for the 11-1/2-inch fashion diva herself, Barbie.

I worked at Mattel on a team with a graphic designer and a structural engineer. We met with product designers who made preliminary drawings, engineers who created prototypes, and marketing mavens who called the business shots. In our brainstorms—or as we called them, “name storms”—we entertained dozens and dozens of ideas. The work wasn’t always fun and games and required many levels of approval. But the rewards were big: A name in print on a package or in a TV commercial. What could be more exciting than to hear a little one ask for Baby Ah-Choo at Toys “R” Us?

Rule No. 2: A name must be easy to pronounce. Some of my favorites: Stack-tivity: a set of building blocks, each with a playful activity on it. A child could draw on the blank face of the What’s Her Face doll. There were plenty of names that I loved that were nixed by a higher authority. For example, Paw-Pets was the perfect name for a set of animal finger puppets. Rule No. 3: Never fall in love with a name—and never take rejection personally.

In so many words, a good name is memorable, meaningful, and distinctive. You know it when you see it. Even more importantly, you know it when you hear it.

I recently bought a pair of men’s cashmere socks, despite the hefty price tag, because the name blended playfulness and luxury. I knew that the recipient of my gift would appreciate it, too: Ovadafut. The spelling may look exotic, but say it out loud.

If you say it out loud and you smile: bingo. That’s the game of the name.

The post Who in the World Named My Cashmere Socks? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Why do you have so many rewards cards in your wallet? You can thank Caesars Entertainment, which pioneered data collection.

Gary Loveman, the CEO of Caesars Entertainment, and his math nerds do not wander casino floors personally sizing up customers as Benny Binion and old-time Vegas hands once did. Rather, they study data about customers’ past visits and project their potential future value. Just watching someone at a gaming table or slot machine for as little as 60 minutes makes it possible to predict how valuable a gambler may be in the future. It all comes down to how much someone typically bets, how many bets in a row he places, and how skilled he is. Such personal data is so valuable that Caesars sometimes reimburses newcomers for up to $100 in losses if they sign up for the rewards program and gamble for an hour.

The data gathering begins soon after a gambler walks into the cavernous casino lobby. A slight haze may linger from smoke (in the United States most casinos are among the last great refuges for those who enjoy cigarettes). A subtle perfume scents the air, pumped in to create a specific memory sensation. The gambler looks for her favorite slot machine and plops down. She reaches into her wallet and pulls out her Caesars Total Rewards loyalty card. She reaches toward a card reader surrounded by dotted orange lights. It turns green after she inserts the plastic card. From that moment, the casino records everything, starting with how much cash and paper ticket value she puts into the machine (coins were phased out more than a decade ago).

Caesars know exactly how many times she pushes the button triggering the electronic wheels to spin in random combination. They know how much she is losing (or, less often, winning) from the moment she starts. The law of averages means that everyone will lose over time. Yet the casinos want her to keep returning, so they will do everything they can short of rigging the machines to mitigate a particularly bad day. If she loses far more than she traditionally wagers and far worse than the game’s mathematical odds predict, a host, tipped off by a message to a smart phone, might arrive with a coupon for a free buffet to cheer her up. The logic? A bad day could inspire a gambler to defect to another casino to change her luck.

From time to time a host will greet elite-status slot machine players. At Caesars Palace, that might be Holly Danforth, a striking 6-foot-tall blonde in her late 20s who aspires to become an actress or model. She introduces herself and addresses the player by name, which she knows from the data on her cell phone. “Most of the time they are very shocked,” she says. “They ask, ‘How do you know that?’ I tell them it’s by their participation in Total Rewards.” She then gives out a business card and invites the player to contact her for any future assistance. If the player is a man who makes a pass at her, something she says happens all the time, she tries to gracefully extract herself and continue toward the next VIP.

Taking a break in the action, the gambler heads to one of the casino’s many restaurants. The maître d’ asks if she is a Total Rewards member. The waiter hands her a menu with two rows of prices, with a few bucks off each item for loyalty members. Or she could sign up for six all-you-can-eat buffets within a 24-hour period at the discounted price of $47.99. Caesars record exactly what she orders and over time chart her favorite foods. Capping off the evening at a show, she hands in the card to buy tickets, giving the management insights into what kind of entertainment she prefers.

In a fast-moving table game like craps, a supervisor notes down bets by visual observation, less precise monitoring than with slot machines. A player can later check credited points on a casino computer. If the gambler feels shortchanged, management can review a videotape of betting. The supervisor also keeps a close eye out for players trying to game the system. Some bet especially heavily when the supervisor comes into view, hoping they will be credited with more loyalty points. Others quietly pocket some of their own chips to exaggerate their losses (casinos are especially keen to lure back losers with generous future offers). The company is considering spending tens of millions of dollars to buy chips embedded with radio-frequency ID transmitters, which would allow the casino to track bets to the exact dollar.

In all, Loveman says, Caesars casinos know: “Did you respond to an offer when you came to the facility? Are you a resident with us at the hotel or not? When do you come? How long do you stay? What game do you play? How intently do you play it? What’s the average wager? What sort of success did you have in the game? Were you a big winner, a big loser, an average winner, an average loser? Did you eat when you were with us? Did you go to the show? What kind of dining habits do you have? Do you shop?”

Rod Serling’s old Twilight Zone episode, titled “The Fever,” portrays a slot machine that knows the elderly husband’s name, Franklin, and beckons him in an ominous voice. His obsession eventually drives him mad. Today Franklin might receive a direct solicitation for his business by mail, e-mail, or smart phone. A host might also call him up to see how he is doing.

Some critics say all this clever marketing exploits those with a particular weakness for gambling, especially those who suffer from gambling addiction. Loveman responds that while gambling addiction is a real issue, 98 percent of his clients can dispassionately decide whether to take advantage of a marketing promotion. These clients can rationally decide to buy or not in the same way they might review a new offer for books or products from Amazon.com.

“For the 2 percent of the people who are addicted, there is no evidence to suggest being good marketers is really the issue. The addiction has to do with lots of other issues, and there are mental health circumstances,” Loveman says. “It’s not whether or not the guy who runs the casino is especially capable or incapable of offering them things that they care about.”

By tracking a gambler’s last visit, a casino has information that can help lure him back in the future. Such logic motivates many companies far from Las Vegas to collect our personal data. Whether it is a local restaurant, airline, or online retailer, businesses want to know as much about us as possible, hoping to gain an edge in marketing.

Even if you have never set foot in a casino, many businesses—credit cards, banks, alarm companies, magazines, divorce lawyers, you name it—are trying to serve up individualized offers based on their interpretations of your personal data. You don’t get a pile of free chips from those companies, of course. But you might get a free flight, meal, or other benefit based on your value as a customer.

The post What the Casino Knows appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I may be forgetting one or two others, but my quick count makes me fairly representative: The research firm Colloquy estimated last year that the number of loyalty programs per U.S. household stands at 22.

I have derived tremendous value from some of these programs, particularly those of the airlines and booksellers. Having concentrated most of my flying on United lately, I am rewarded with a little extra legroom in coach and the ability to check my bags for free. I know, I know, it’s a glamorous life: I even get to board with Group 2 these days, and once in a long while I have been able to trade in miles for a free trip.

At Barnes & Noble, the 10 percent discount I get with my paid membership adds up, even if it represents a conflict of interest with my Amazon Prime membership. Prime (also a pay-to-play) is among the more ingenious of all loyalty programs, featuring unlimited free two-day shipping—whose value to me (and cost to Amazon) increases with every purchase I don’t make elsewhere.

Now that I think of it, it feels odd being in a relationship with both booksellers. What kind of loyalty is that? Retailers call it “polygamous loyalty” (a term I advise you try not to use in other contexts), which speaks to the lack of seriousness underlying the loyalty program craze. By 2012, Americans had amassed 2.65 billion loyalty program memberships, which isn’t difficult when loyalty is defined so loosely.

It’s not hard to understand the reasons for our current craze for this form of marketing, which began in the mid- to late-1990s. Companies want to track your habits and preferences to improve their business. And new technologies like cell phone apps are making it ever more easier for companies to vie for your next purchase with targeted seduction.

The Federal Trade Commission issued a report last week on just how extensive the tracking of your consumer data is; the FTC also called for legislation to force more transparency around the issue of how much privacy you are surrendering for your loyalty. Your consumer behaviors are tracked even if you don’t sign up for a rewards card at your neighborhood grocer, but the tracking is far more individualized and accurate if you do open an account. Still, I suspect a majority of consumers are perfectly content to surrender their privacy not only to get better deals, but to recreate (even if in a virtual way) a seemingly more intimate, relationship-driven identity not just as a consumer but as an individual. Most people like the fact that multi-billion-dollar enterprises like Amazon and their grocery chain “know” them, much like people in a different era appreciated being known by the general store clerk, or the dairyman who made daily deliveries. It’s all about shrinking our worlds down to a scale where we matter.

Retail rewards and loyalty programs aren’t new, of course. I can remember being impressed as a child, on visits from Mexico to my relatives in East Texas, by how fun one of the pioneer loyalty programs seemed. We’d go shopping at Piggly Wiggly and get rewarded with a bunch of green stamps that would go in an album that could be traded in for goodies. And banks for decades would lure in customers with promises of free toasters or other tangible goods. Still, you have to credit Robert Crandall, the CEO of American Airlines who launched the first frequent flyer program in 1981, as the patron saint of contemporary loyalty/rewards programs driven by once unimaginable computing power. Few business leaders have had a bigger impact on how we lead our lives, even if his legacy has little to do with the mechanics of how we fly.

I am torn about all this commercialized loyalty. Yes, I have benefited. I derive some satisfaction (and, dare I say it, purpose and identity) in defining myself by the choices I make as a consumer. But I am often annoyed by retailers’ clinginess. Sometimes I just want to buy a cookie without entering into a lasting relationship (I’m talking to you, Panera Bread). As much as I benefit from my relationships with United or my grocery store, I enjoy being an uncommitted free agent in other arenas. I am loyal to no gas station, department store, or barbershop, which gives me a lot of freedom and anonymity, at the cost of picking up some rewards.

What’s most worrisome is the rising cost of not opting in. There have long been members-only stores, but I fear we are heading into a future where every retail experience will be defined by whether you are in or out of network. Fly an airline whose program you’re not signed up for, and you’ll be treated as an aggravating nuisance. Refuse to hand over your card or phone number at the grocery store, and you’ll be greeted with incredulity, making you feel like an anti-social element, or a visitor from North Korea. And they’ll charge you higher prices.

One welcome exception to this trend is Albertsons, the West Coast-based grocery behemoth, which announced last year that it was discontinuing its rewards card and offering the same “special” prices to all customers, all of whom deserve to be treated equally well. What a concept. Too bad Albertsons isn’t in my area—I could imagine becoming quite a loyal customer.

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