This seems insane to me. I live in a city where maybe 50-60% of people have cars, and most don’t drive them that much. Yet every grocery store I’m aware of with the sole exception of the expensive Whole Foods has a fuel rewards points program. Reasons this should be controversial enough to enable a low-cost alternative:
- Many people don’t drive and therefore pay a little more for groceries because it includes a perk they don’t use
- It seems like a very ardent pro-fossil fuel move that you’d think would cause some sort of negative attention from environment activists.
- The subsidy typically applies as an amount off per gallon, so you end up really subsidizing big vehicles with big gas tanks. Again, really makes some customers subsidize others and you’d think people (other than me) would be annoyed at this.
But yet, virtually every grocery store does this. Anyone know why? Does the fossil fuel industry somehow encourage this?
First of all, you make some good points here already.
I think in addition to those, gasoline is often viewed as a “loss leader”. It’s a necessity that many people need, so they are hoping to draw a lot of people in to their storefront with low gas prices. They take a small loss on the gas, and then turn around and gouge the crap out of the customers on things like soda, batteries, snacks, sunscreen, etc.
On top of that, many competitors have the same idea, and/or feel they have to sell gas cheap in order to even compete. Gas prices are artificially low in the USA for this and other reasons, like government subsidies.
And the news media loves to cover fluctuations in gasoline prices. Easy content for them