I’m just not clear on how the relationship between sales and marketing at club stores with the consumers being tracked by their preferences equates to “total control of population” nor how it’s necessarily “for ends that do not benefit those populations”.
There are plenty of examples of things like that, the one coming to mind is the conservative poor who regularly vote against the government subsidies they depend on for survival. But Costco tracking what you buy and gearing their marketing pitches towards you hardly is total control nor is it necessarily not to the population’s benefit.
Google and friends do this as well - because of tracking of (some of) my web browsing and email habits, the ads that I get on various webpages are much more geared to my taste. While it certainly benefits the marketers to get my eyes on their products, it’s also to my benefit to see ads of things I’m actually interested in rather than another pitch to extend my penis size or enlarge my breasts or buy a certain burger. I admit that people often don’t realize how much of this is done, and it can certainly be invasive, but I’m still capable of making my own choices no matter how much the marketing is pushed on me, so it’s neither total control nor is it for an end that has no benefit to me.
My comment was not just about club stores. It was a much more general statement that’s been pushed into absurdity by assuming I meant “…on aisle 8 at the Indianapolis Costco.”
Xap, I respect you far too much to think this absurdity really represents your thinking.
Whatever kind of virtual reality Amazon.com represents, it’s not the same as a physical facility with live humans walking in and out of it, scratching their balls, fondling the merchandise and trundling it to the checkout and their car. However powerful the analytics online retailing can muster, there is no substitute for what ‘ground truth’ of people and purchasable products in physical conjunction can reveal. The more so when the people are a very large but 100% identified and tracked population.
The smug assumption that remote data and analytics is jest ez good has bitten an awful lot of businesses and experts on the ass over, well, a good part of history.
Sorry, but I simply don’t agree. Club stores are too limited in product diversity, type of shopper, and locations to compete against even chain stores like WalMart or Target. Other types of national chains, including supermarkets, fast food, or pharmacies, can certainly cast their nets either wider or deeper. International retailers like Carrefour or Tesco are also larger world-wide than Costco, and their industry totals dwarf club stores.
I can’t prove that remote data is better, but the sheer size and depth of the data make that a likely proposition. Club stores are, in the end, using data as remote as online. I’m sure that they observe actual customer behavior in store, but I’m also sure that’s a minuscule fraction of the rest of the data they collect.
So, two points. One is that club stores are smaller and narrower than other brick-and-mortar companies and the other is that online data gatherers are probably an order of magnitude larger in what they can collect. I believe your facts are wrong and therefore the conclusions you’re drawing from them are - I’ll reuse the word - specious.
And you still don’t have a leg to stand on re: facilities.