The Aisles Have Eyes

November 14, 2016
Concerned that consumers are being tracked digitally in physical stores as well as online, Turow (The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth) explains where, why, and how it’s happening, and what the very ill effects might be. Where includes name-brand stores such as Macy’s, Sears, Target, Walgreens, Walmart. Why has to do with retailers’ quests for higher sales and determination to outwit their online competitors. How involves an awful lot of data mining, those ubiquitous shopper “rewards” programs, and various technologies: facial recognition, GPS tracking, Bluetooth “beacons,” 3-D sensors, digital wallets, and smartphone apps that can wake themselves up and start displaying personalized promotional offers as soon as a shopper enters a store. It’s all thoroughly researched and clearly presented with detailed evidence and fascinating peeks inside the retail industry. Much of this information is startling and even chilling, particularly when Turow shows how retail data-tracking can enable discrimination and societal stratification. His troubling conclusion: “This new direction in retail may be healthy for some stores’ bottom lines,” but it is eroding the “historical ideal of egalitarian treatment in the American marketplace.”

November 15, 2016
Blame it on the smartphone, the technology that is bringing internetlike tracking and surveillance into brick-and-mortar stores.In this revealing account, Turow (Communication/Univ. of Pennsylvania; The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth, 2012, etc.) describes how the same online personalization made possible on your computer by cookies has reared its head in the aisles and checkouts of supermarkets and department stores, where 90 percent of all retail purchases still occur. "Tying into the always-on smartphone carried by about 70 percent of Americans," writes the author, "merchants, brand manufacturers, and their agents are exploiting cellular signals, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, sound waves, light waves, and more to track customers and send them product messages before, during, and after their store visits." This is the beginning of a "great transformation" in retailing: by 2028, half of all Americans are expected to have body implants that can communicate with retailers as they walk around stores, which will allow merchants to gather increasingly specific data on shoppers and redefine seller-customer relationships. In return for capturing data--generally without shoppers' awareness--merchants offer loyalty programs, discount coupons, and other benefits. In effect, they are training consumers to "give up personal data willingly," accept discriminations made between high- and low-value shoppers (with some getting better prices than others), and relinquish "the historical ideal of egalitarian treatment in the American marketplace." Turow writes in a matter-of-fact manner that barely disguises his outrage at the invasiveness of the under-the-radar surveillance at Target, Wal-Mart, and elsewhere, which, he says, demands regulation and consumer education. While sometimes repetitious, his book offers invaluable insights about in-store data-gathering, including frank observations from unnamed industry sources. Most retailers, he writes, hope future generations will simply accept surveillance and tracking as part of the American shopping experience. Valuable reading for shoppers and retailers alike.

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