In the age of online shopping and digital information, it’s easy to get paranoid about how much vendors know about us. You want to get creeped out? Start paying attention to the recommendations that Amazon makes to you based on what you’ve previously looked at and purchased.
But taking all your shopping to a bricks and mortar department store won’t help preserve your privacy. Exhibit #1? Target figured out that a high school girl was pregnant and started sending her maternity coupons before her father knew anything was going on.
How did Target know the young woman was preggers? It seems that pregnant women have very predictable buying patterns. And according to an article the New York Times, Target tracks every consumer who comes to their stores with a unique number tied to their credit/debit cards.
This young lady was buying the right combination of cocoa butter lotions, soaps, and mineral supplements that told Target there was an 86 percent likelihood she was pregnant. So Target started sending her coupons for the products people expecting babies are likely to buy.
When these coupons showed up in the mail, the young woman’s father got upset called Target to complain. Are you trying to talk my underage daughter into getting pregnant? he asked. Target apologized repeatedly to the father. Then dad had a discussion with his daughter, and called Target back to apologize himself. His daughter was pregnant, but hadn’t told him.
There are a host of fascinating ethical and pragmatic issues that come out of this case. But there are two that come to mind immediately:
- How can stores make good use of data mining to build customer loyalty?
- How can stores do this without creeping out their customers?
Online privacy? Worry about it, sure. But there are plenty of other places that are tracking your behavior in the “real” world as well. (Thanks to Kashmir Hill’s blog The Not So Private Parts for this story.)
- Update: A great story from back in 2009 from NPR’s On the Media on web-based targeting that seems to connect perfectly with this story from 2012.