Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart’s warehouse chain, is now offering a program called eValues that strives to offer discount deals tailored to each member, based on that member’s buying history.

Previously, Sam’s Club coupons had a typical response rate of 1 percent or 2 percent. With eValues, according to Linda Vytlacil, vice president for member insights and innovation, as many as 20 percent to 30 percent of eligible customers collect the discount they are offered.

The eValues program is the latest iteration in the fast-growing field known as predictive analytics, which uses vast amounts of data to spot trends and anticipate consumer behaviour.

Datamining on this scale does enable companies to provide very real benefits to consumers (and to influence their buying behaviors by offering carefully-tailored deals).

However it does raise at least a couple of questions:

(a) would consumers have bought the products anyway (so operators are just giving away margins); and

(b) will consumer watchdogs raise significant privacy concerns?

Tags: datamining, discounts, eValues, loyalty program, predictive analytics, Sam's Club, wal-mart