Just went food shopping and was thinking about how cool it would be if supermarkets kept track of your purchases via a club card or something similar. I know they semi do this already, but if the data was stored and analyzed correctly, it could lead to Amazon.com-like recommendations for other food, recipes, deals, etc. They could even warn you when they’re going to stop carrying a product you always buy. I know I’d go and stock up.
Seems like a golden opportunity to me.
3 Responses and Counting...
They do. Kroger recently used its huge data warehouse to notify customers who had purchased peanut products that were recalled for salmonella. Could have interesting uses in marketing, but what about privacy?
What happens when these lists are sold? What if one day my health insurance company decides to drop me because they don't like the snacks I buy at the supermarket?
I had heard a little bit about the Kroger story, but I didn't know if they used it proactively to market their products or provide useful recipes, recommendations, etc.
I hadn't thought much about the privacy issue, but it makes sense. It seems to me like the store would have to have a something in their fine print that indicates they will never release the data to third parties, or have people identified by numbers in their systems instead of names.
This kind of data collection and consumer segmentation is widespread in the UK. Try and get your hands on some of the research Tesco has conducted in conjunction with Dunnhumby…