Maybe some of you retail-savvy folks can help me out on this one:

When I shop at CVS and I take my items up to the register, they ask me if I have a CVS card. Every time. They ask everybody this every time somebody steps up to the register.

When I reply, "No, I don't have a CVS card," they go ahead and input a store card number and give me the discount regardless.

Why? If they want me to have a card, why do they give me the card-benefit for free? I'm working on a few different theories:

1. Everything in the store is automatically priced high so that customers feel that they got a real discount.

2. The card's real benefit is the earning of points or cash or some other accumulating item, so giving me a discount really isn't the point. This way, I'm paying what they want me to pay and not accumulating all sorts of other benefits and blessings.

3. It's psychological - they want me to think that the clerk did me a "solid." They want me to feel like CVS does a great job of doing favors JUST for me. (But I hear them asking everybody in line, so that shoots that theory out of the water...)

Why all the games, CVS?