this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Pfft! Like they wouldn't find some other pretense if theft wasn't a thing.
They don't collect this data because of shoplifters, that's a convenient excuse. They collect this data because it is useful to them from a marketing perspective. To know who is looking at what products like they might be interested, mixed with demographic information. Companies go nuts for this kind of data.
Skilled marketers try to identify the needs of the consumers that use their products so they can offer even more relevant products and find opportunities to upsell. Ideally, they try to create positive brand impressions with their marketing touchpoints, only reaching out with information that is timely and relevant. Bad marketers just play the numbers game by spamming inboxes and throwing everything against the wall until something sticks.
That is not how marketing for a retail store works at all! They'd put themselves out of business by pulling that shit.
They want to gauge what you are interested in for a number of reasons:
purchasing frequency. Do people who buy this product tend to do so as a repeat purchase or as one-off purchases? If you know this you can adjust discounts to pull in more people that would otherwise make this purchase at a different store.
purchasing correlation. So you've bought a new Xbox. What else do you want to buy alongside it? Games and controllers of course! There are a ton of other, less obvious correlated purchases out there, and this is great information for bundling promotions.
attention span: does this product actually get people's attention? Seems pretty obvious why they want this data.
does said attention translate into purchases? If not, why not? Might be an ideal target for a targeted survey later. Can be used to justify replacing a product on store shelves.
customer metrics: provides accurate information about the activity going on in the store, what times are the busiest, which times are the lull hours, and accurate headcounts for number of customers.
Impulse purchases. You're there looking for a thing that brings you to an area, put something tangentially related in easy view nearby. It's the same sort of thing as why there are single serve candy and soda at the checkout 'cheap, easy, convinient' on items that will generally have high margin to them.