When I see the number of errors, some laughable, on my credit reports, a place where accuracy and specifics should be paramount, I wonder just how accurate other data is when validity is of secondary importance.
I think most data like this is junk. He who relies upon it does so at a great risk.
Meh.
I don’t use or have any loyalty shopping cards. I can still buy Honey Nut Cheerios and Jif Peanut Butter. I guess I’ll be fine.
The very short answer is that by using better tracking of what people buy, and in what combinations, stores can make more profit by selling to you at a lower price than if they didn’t have that data. That’s one reason groceries are so cheap. It benefits everybody, both the customers and the shareholders - and don’t forget, these are often the same people. The majority of people, including anyone with a pension, are at least indirectly shareholders in major companies.
It’s getting harder to answer what are much the same questions without repeating what’s already been said. If nothing I’ve said about invasion of privacy and limiting of choices due to the cycle of tracking and marketing adjustment bothers you - particularly if you still see it as benign or even beneficial to you or the great cycle of commerce - I’d have to go a lot further afield to make the answers make sense, and that’s where the limitations of this discussion medium make themselves felt.
Let me try a different approach.
Say it was the state - your state - doing this; that for nebulously framed reasons about monitoring commerce and taxation and diet choices and the like, you had to use a state-issued ‘membership card’ to buy consumer goods. Would you consider that benign? Would you accept their using this mass of consumer data to shape legislation and commerce rules, knowing that their view has more to do with tax revenue and do-goody ‘protection’ that will affect your wallet and consumption choices?
I’m going to wager “not” and that it would be ten times worse if it was the Feds doing it. Invasion of privacy! First and Fourth Amendments! Taxes! Control! Pitchforks! Torches!
But let’s argue for it: the gummint should (be allowed to) track consumer purchasing on an individual basis, because it generates tons of useful social, civic and economic data that can be used to oversee and adjust the state economy. (Or the federal one.) It’s being done by public servants, openly, with the anonymized data being a matter of public record and the processes being open pretty much top to bottom.
I’m betting again that very few people would approve of this or think it benign.
So… why is much the same process, in the hands of private industry that answers to no one but some of their peers, for the benefit of no one but themselves, with the goal of maximizing profits in ways far outside traditional ways, including reducing and directing consumer choice to serve their goals - why is this secretive, manipulative process for purely commercial purposes okay just because they’ve tied it to discounts and “rewards” they could easily give on many other bases? Is the satisfaction of getting a $5 coupon from time to time really enough for you to overlook that entities larger than some governments, and more immediately powerful in your life in some ways, are collecting endless detailed data on your activities - data you would very likely be up in arms about were it Unca Sam doing it?
If the government sent you a $10 check every month for allowing them to collect all that data, would that make it worthwhile or okay or change the fundamental issues of privacy and control?
If you really think you - consumers - are coming out on the good end of the exchange (data for coupons and discounts that are pretty much irrelevant to the data), you’re crediting Coke and PepsiCo and Kraft and ConAgra and General Mills and all the rest with an awful lot of largesse and kindliness towards us all, things that are pretty hard to point to in any other action they take, from shelf arrangements to international tax structure.
But if you’re okay with it, I won’t argue the point further with you. If anyone is starting to understand what my real concerns are here, maybe a new and specific thread or threads would be better than dragging out the narrow ‘tracking’ issue any further.
Wait, companies don’t set up big, complicated, and expensive systems just as a favor to the customer? Surely this can’t be true.
I spent a long time (too long) discussing things with a client the other day. Each time he changed the parameters on the situation, I’d mentally come up with the impact the change would have on the total cost.
He eventually scowled, and said, “It sounds like all you’re interested in is money.”
I replied, “Honestly, the only reason I’m having this discussion is money.”
I pissed him off, but still got his business.
WildBlueYonder–Yes.
We are all watching you.
Everybody on the SDMB.
Day and night.
Night and day.
We control every aspect of your existence.
Since you were born.
We monitor your bank accounts, and what books & magazines you read.
We record your every conversation, especially the ones in bed, and take stock of your favorite sexual positions, all carefully filmed, through night vision scopes.
Your lovers? All spies, hand-picked by us.
Even your Mother & Father were in on it.
We weight & measure your bowel movements, and monitor your very mind.
We are all part of…the Conspiracy.
We have Secret Meetings, where we gather to mock our witless dupe, and plot out the next torments that you…and only you…suffer in your life.
So.
How’s the weather, neighbor?
STAY IN VIEW!!!
So, we have this information gathered from store cards. Which in turn is sold to another group. And that data is sold to another group.
And finally we get to the end buyer. That has amassed all the data. And controls it all.
Let’s say this was and evil end buyer (group).
AB, what would they do? Threaten to tell my wife about my girlfriend?
I like the somewhat smug suggestion that I am being led around by the nose, thanks to advertising. I’m not, I buy what I buy, and will continue to do so. In fact, my shopping habits are fairly regular when it comes to groceries. I have a core set of things that I will always be purchasing, year-round, every year. And when it comes down to it, my grocery bill will ALWAYS be lower than that of HypotheticalKrondys, who is like me in EVERY respect but one- he believes that the Lizard Illuminati wants to track him through his grocer’s loyalty program, and therefore refuses to use it.
I’m not an idiot. I realize that my lower grocery bill is not a result of altruism on the part of the megaconglomerate behind my local grocery store. The idea behind loyalty cards on the whole makes sense, without the need for just being a ploy to gather data on my personal shopping habits. The psychology behind it works just fine- I have a card, that occasionally rewards me just for using it, making it more likely that I am going to return to THAT store to get a reward. It is the same principle as that behind MMOs, or phone games, or casinos.
How long before these fitness devices come with a probe with a disposable tip with sensors, so you can stick it in your piss and shit, upload the data to the cloud and compare your piss and shit with other peoples piss and shit?
People love that kind of shit these days.
I’m not **AB **but one thing that airlines have started doing (depending on who you listen to) is increase the price of a flight once they’ve discovered you have significant interest in it. Right now they adjust flight prices based on perceived demand from segmented groups (business vs vacation) but if they can get better information on specific individuals they could adjust their prices upwards to what the market will bear.
This is already happening in many ways without personalized data (why does a 2 liter bottle of Coke cost less than a 20 oz bottle?) but more data may allow it to happen more precisely. And it’s unlikely to help the average consumer.
Having said that, the other fears from mostly anonomized data is mostly overblown IMO.
I’ve already answered that in some detail. The data is used to shape everything about your shopping experience, in that store and others. You think the web, and places like Facebook are “echo chambers” that only show you things you’ve already seen and proven to have liked? That’s the goal with this level of marketing analysis - to create a shopping/buying presentation that is so attuned to your perceptions that even more of it gets past your economic defenses.
This is NOT making sure your favorite brands are front and center, as some kind of kindly convenience, as has been suggested. It’s making sure things they know they can make you buy are front and center. Those two groups don’t necessarily overlap, especially if you think of yourself as a thrifty shopper who is perfectly happy with, say, generic bleach. They do it to make their brand-name (profitable) (theirs) (not that other conglom’s) bleach more and more attractive to you, until the right combination of shelf placement and sale price makes you buy it.
It’s also not just about you - it’s about everyone who shops in those stores. The issue is that big data analysis allows the models to be refined on much lower granularity data than even ten years ago, and thus make the product targeting that much more precise and effective. They don’t do this so you can keep on buying (low-profit) (not theirs) generic bleach.
Okay. Pretty sure I didn’t say much if anything about advertising. Oh look, kitties!
And people love sharing it, because the system is set up that way - it’s all about fun healthy comparisons to motivate you blah blah blah… and feed yet more rather intimate and important data into the system. (Probably not the state of your colon, but see next week’s model.)
If a nice lady came up to you at a mall or knocked on your door or called you during dinner and wanted to know your BP and heart rate, what are the odds you’d answer very far from some form of “Fuck off!” …but with your wristy toy you hand it over having paid for the privilege, and feel good about it. Think about that a bit.
Okay. You at least recognize the clouds on the horizon. I’m good with it. Keep an open mind.
In my previous job I worked with that data. For the most part we were looking to provide a better experience to the consumer that would result in more eyeball time and more purchases. But that’s the motivation for every change to a website (we were working mostly with online retail and entertainment).
Variable pricing is a concern, but I can’t say it’s uniquely tied to big data. Remember those soda machines that would jack up the price when the temperature was above a certain degree?
There are perfectly honest and straightforward marketing efforts and teams. I don’t necessarily feel what they’re doing is benign, but working within the traditional model of “make our product more appealing so people will buy more of it” is almost completely outside my circle of concern. Make the box any color your like, choose any font, position it and price it as you like… it’s hardly even worth calling manipulation.
It’s the elevation from a genial song-and-dance to a three-card monte grift that concerns me - when it’s not an outright “big store.”
I drive by a Motel 6 with a digital price sign that rises and falls like the Dow average. Shrug. So rooms are worth more on a weekend with the team’s in town than they are on a February Wednesday night. Whatever.
It’s when the consumer’s choices are limited and directed to those that benefit only the chain of sellers - when it’s an effort to extract profit at any cost - that I see it as an issue. Unfortunately, that’s becoming the norm, not some excess by a crazed Martin Shkreli or EpiPen pricing structure.
Can you post some specific examples of how this works? I’m still a bit unclear and I don’t want to respond without knowing more about your concerns.
It’s a conspiracy!
I don’t know what more I can add to what’s already been said here that will make it any clearer. The supporting arguments go quite a ways from “tracking” issues.
If you haven’t read it, I suggest Michael Moss’s Salt Sugar Fat, which is about a particular segment of the market and a subset of consumer good producers but contains a very clear portrait of them. Read it less for the arguments about food changes to maximize quasi-addiction and sales than for the absolutely naked discussions of how the conglomerates manage marketing and product engineering to profit-at-any-cost ends… and from the mouths of those actually managing the process. No secrets at all; just a smug assurance that they are Good Businessmen and Joe Consumer wont get it even if some idiot tries to beat him over the head about it.
Other threads, other explanations and topics.
Why, yes. Yes it is. It’s not even a secret one. Avalanches don’t need inter-pebble coordination.
Missed edit, but the issue that’s immediately relevant is this: if someone continually observed your house from every available public angle - and wasn’t too picky about crossing neighbors’ territory - and wrote down everything they saw, every activity, every time, every word they could overhear, what time lights went on and off, what your utility meters read (telescope here)… would you feel your privacy was being invaded, regardless of what to purpose they intended to put that notebook?
And a repeat: suppose the government did the same - specifically, completely legally, but very very intensely focused on your household and its activities? You good with that?
But when it’s just kindly old fumbling Proctor & Gamble… it’s okay, right?
Its different because government has much more power to do harm. A person can be disconnected from consumerism, but not from government.
I wouldn’t disagree, but I’ve chosen to focus on consumer issues. I find it more disturbing that corporate entities answering only to themselves choose to manipulate us to serve their ends than I do that government does. We have enough political pundits; I choose to pundit elsewhere. 