How Companies Learn Your Secrets 354
Hugh Pickens writes "For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. Now the NY Times Magazine reports on how companies like Target identify those unique moments in consumers' lives when their shopping habits become particularly flexible and the right advertisement or coupon can cause them to begin spending in new ways. Among life events, none are more important than the arrival of a baby, and new parents are a retailer's holy grail. In 2002, marketers at Target asked statisticians to answer an odd question: 'If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn't want us to know, can you do that?' Specifically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things, like prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing. 'We knew that if we could identify them in their second trimester, there's a good chance we could capture them for years,' says statistician Andrew Pole. 'As soon as we get them buying diapers from us, they're going to start buying everything else too.' As Pole's computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a 'pregnancy prediction' score and he soon had a list of tens of thousands of women who were most likely pregnant. About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry. 'My daughter got this in the mail!' he said. 'She's still in high school, and you're sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?' The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again but the father was somewhat abashed. 'It turns out there's been some activities in my house I haven't been completely aware of. She's due in August. I owe you an apology.'"
Re:Am I the first to call BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
You underestimate the power of directed advertising. To give you a hint, that's what makes Facebook worth and estimated $100 billion.
That's an eye-opener (Score:5, Insightful)
But not terribly surprising.
Given the opportunity, marketers will be more observant of the goings-on in a household than, say, the father of the house.
Hell, I am the father of the house, and most stuff that happens catches me by surprise. So I can sympathize with the father mentioned at the end of TFS.
Creepy, but it used to be more common (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when retailers had a more personal connection to their clients, it was also not uncommon for a shopkeeper to notice that a customer was pregnant and stock something specifically for her. Personalization has always existed; this is a more of a comeback than something completely new.
The flipside is that a shopkeeper also had a personal connection to the mother. Target has no such connection to Customer#9810957065409. This takes the personalization away from 'cozy' toward 'creepy'. It's like the uncanny valley of interactions.
Re:Am I the first to call BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
The anecdote might be fake, but the use of stats? More than you can imagine. The fact is, human behavior is predictable.
Re:That's an eye-opener (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm the father of the house, and I came to the conclusion that I don't want to know what's going on in the house. Both kids are in their late teens now, and mutual ignorance seems to be the best way to get along.
Re:Creepy, but it used to be more common (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more like retail stalking.
Big Business and Big Government (Score:5, Insightful)
Coincidentally, the FBI now lists as suspicious activity making purchases with cash.
ad hominem, outing, and stalking (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost all forums have rules against personal attacks [wikipedia.org]. You'd commonly be banned for posting someone else's "IRL" (in real life) information. Yet here we see corporations doing exactly that for nothing more than profit. Data-mining like this is the beginning of an assault on our right to be "secure in our persons" and enjoy privacy.
Re:Am I the first to call BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you find it so surprising that they do a good enough job of detecting pregnancy that after the better part of a decade they'll have found a case where the girl's father didn't know yet? Keep in mind that the girl is probably trying a lot harder to keep it a secret from her father than she is the store. Especially if he's the type that gets upset enough over stupid coupons implying potential pregnancy to go yell at a store manager? Yeah, I'm sure he's the first person she would tell.
Honestly, I expect this happens quite a lot, but most people aren't hotheaded enough to go yell at a store manager about coupons. (Who would then have to call the them back a couple days later? That strikes me as more creepy than the preggo-score.)
Re:Am I the first to call BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever checked your mail? Notice how it's literally full of completely untargeted advertising? If that's profitable, how could this possibly not be?
Re:Am I the first to call BS? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Who would then have to call the them back a couple days later? That strikes me as more creepy than the preggo-score.)
Maybe the manager asked for the telephone number when the guy came to complain so that he could call back a couple days later and offer them some kind of conciliatory special deal at the store (like discounts on something). On the other hand, maybe the manager was trying to arrange for the guy's family to no longer get (at the time, presumed faulty) targeted advertising, and was calling back to give them an update on the process (once again having explicitly asked for contact information for just this purpose). I don't know if it was actually creepy. We don't know enough details to come to a conclusion about that, I think.
Re:That's an eye-opener (Score:5, Insightful)
I think once your kids hit their late teens, they're close enough to being adults (if not outright adults) that the time when you're close personal involvement could have changed anything is long past. You're basically stuck with "I told you so..."
Re:Creepy, but it used to be more common (Score:5, Insightful)
So the retailer loaded up on all the wacko, high mark-up accessory pieces for my wife's china pattern and every time my aunt came into the store she would get the sales pitch for a soup tureen or something. This went on for years.
I think that's a great illustration of the problem here - Target and all the other companies that are using "targeted advertising" are going beyond simply providing a service to actively trying to manipulate people. Advertising to inform is good, advertising to convince people spend money on products they wouldn't otherwise purchase is bad.
Re:That's an eye-opener (Score:1, Insightful)
You clearly do not have children of that age (late teen).
That is the time that you have to let them learn independence and consequence. Telling them is not going to do a lick of good, they have to experience those things first hand.
Go back to academia with your theory, it doesn't apply in the real.
Re:That's an eye-opener (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm detecting some sarcasm, but my detector has been acting up lately, so my apologies if I'm putting words in your mouth.
If you're suggesting that his giving his young adult children some privacy is a bad thing, I would ask you for a more rational alternative. The best thing I can come up with is give them their space and to simply make it clear that you're always available and open to discussion. Being oppressive and snooping in their private lives only forces them to become rebellious.
Re:Creepy, but it used to be more common (Score:4, Insightful)
That isn't what they want to do here. What they want to do is become the prime retailer for a set of products that people start buying at certain stages in their lives. Like how Gillette will send out free razors to people when the turn 18 to try and make them Gillette consumers for their life's supply of shaving products. Target here is trying to predict people who are pregnant and have reached the stage where they are ready to buy the associated baby products and providing incentives for these people to buy the products at Target. Then, the customers will be predisposed to continue buying these products at Target.
They aren't trying to convince them to buy products they don't need, they are trying to convince them to buy a new range of products that they will need or want to buy from a specific retailer.
Re:That's an eye-opener (Score:5, Insightful)
Teen pregnancy is the topic, and it's implied that you're mutually agreeing to be ignorant of who is banging who, but really, the topic of sex doesn't have to be taboo. If anything that just makes it more of a reason to go out and be a rebel.
Re:Baby stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
What a wonderful, mature, high-minded reason to bring a child into the world...
I'm guessing you didn't grow up in a family, or in a family where family is actually considered important. Especially one where there's a lot of little brothers or sisters in it.
Ah, so you could not refute what I said, yet you still didn't like the way it sounded, so now here come the thinly-veiled personal attacks concerning how inferior my life or my family must be. How transparent of you.
My answer to you is very simple. I grew up in and remain in a family where family is considered very important. It's so important, in fact, that we don't make petty "me too!" games and contests of "I got first place!" out of important life events, particularly those as life-changing as becoming a parent.
The family? Very important. Who did what first as if it's a competition? So unimportant that it isn't even on the radar.
No here's the part you don't want to face: if two women in your family actually care about who gets pregnant first, to the point that they will try to become pregnant when one or more of them otherwise wouldn't have done so, the importance of family is low on their list. High up on their list is being petty, catty, and soaking up the attention and adoration from everyone else. If pointing that out offends you, or if you're struck by the realization that there are a lot of petty immature people in the world, then maybe you should deal with that on your own terms instead of trying to make a scapegoat of me.
Re:Am I the first to call BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
where it really gets creepy is their study of children in order to manipulate the spending of parents
Re:Intelligent Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
if you took away all forms of advertising, people would spend much less, and only on things they needed more. we are manipulated into buying stuff we don't need, and that's why there is such big money in advertising (google etc).
Re:Am I the first to call BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, it would be easy to get freaked out by all this, but let's remember what this information is used for: to send you coupons you'd actually want to use. That's the whole thing. Dial back the paranoia a bit.
See, that's the thing. Once they've collected all this data and made all these cross-references there isn't anything preventing the data from being used for other reasons. Kind of like the way drivers licenses and social security numbers were not initially inteded to be a form of identification. Yet once they became widespread it was just soo easy to repurpose them.
Same thing with all of these marketing-driven data collection systems - once they've got a ton of data in them it is pretty much inevitable that someone is going trying and use them for something else. It is just too valuable for people to ignore.