The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power

That large amounts of data are being collected about ourselves and our lives is hardly new. All our digital financial transactions are collected, our telephone calls (if not their content,) are collected, so are our driving patterns, and so much more. How this affects our lives is possibly something we are now alert to, until we get the call from our bank querying ‘unusual purchases’ of large quantities of make-up and running shoes.What is startling about this book though, is the rigour and sophistication with which retailers are gathering data on our private and public lives. It would be absurd to suggest that this gathering of data and turning it into information is evil: we want our credit card company to know when our credit is being used in ways that are unlike us, or the driving pattern of our car does not match our driving style. Similarly, it is useful to know of specials that would interest us, or that products we have been using are being replaced by something better.The second chapter of this thoroughly researched book covers the evolution of retail. Little has changed in the principles of successful retailing, though much has changed in how these principles are applied.The salesman who travelled through the village or between farms had to comply with the same basic principles as does the modern retailer. You must know your customer, buy your wares well, sell your wares well, and maintain your customer base while growing it.The travelling salesman had to know the villagers’ interest in the products he had to offer: he had to buy these goods at prices that would allow him to cover their cost and to make a profit. He had to know his customers well enough to be sure of whom to offer credit to, and who not. He had to maintain his wares so that they were attractive, and present them to customers so that they would be desirable.Without external rating systems, he either had to insist on immediate payment or to be able to extend credit, make the assessment of the buyer’s financial strength.With the advancement of the retail system and the growth of retailers, stores began to develop their own credit systems, offered only to financially strong families. Wares were able to be advertised in newspapers and pamphlets, and their quality began to be assured through brands. More goods were available on display, giving the shoppers a better view of what they were being sold.As towns and cities grew, retailers could grow too. Competition became keener and the elements of retail needed to be addressed differently. The purchasing power of retailers lay in quantity, and the attracting, knowing and keeping customers became more difficult.In the absence of the sophisticated technologies we have today, various ingenious methods were employed to keep track of what was sold and to whom. One of the most enduring methods was the voucher. There was the discount incentive to buy the goods, and a method of knowing if the discount-offer changed behaviour. Vouchers offered a way of knowing at which outlet the goods were being bought, and so on. It was a time-consuming process and a clumsy one, but one of the best on offer. Technological advances made the basic idea of vouchers much more cost-effective and powerful.In the forefront of the sophistication of retailing was Walmart. It was Walmart that embraced technology in its quest for ever-increasing efficiencies, with an eagerness never seen before. Launched in 1962 by Sam Walton, the chain grew systematically from its first store in Rogers, Arkansas. One of the reason for Walmart’s success was its obsessive focus on cost-control throughout its supply chain, which resulted in Walmart growing to a point where few other retailers could buy in larger volumes and at lower prices. Through its size, Walmart could cease buying from wholesalers, and buy only from manufacturers. Their computer systems at the time were reputed to be larger than the Pentagon’s. Their use of barcoded boxes of goods, not only goods themselves, made for ever-greater efficiencies and controls of their processes.Today, pervasive technological advances can enable stores to identify loyal customers. The value of these customers is deemed to be high, because the store doesn’t need to attract them, only retain them.Perhaps the most powerful piece of technology available to the retailer since the advent of the super-powerful computer, is the ubiquitous cell-phone. This always-on, always at-hand device, offers benefits so necessary for the growth of retail stores today.When each store had only a few customers it was the duty of store serving staff to know their customers, what they liked, and how valuable they could be. Today, in a supermarket or clothing chain that would be impossible.On entering a clothing store your cell-phone can identify you, your picture can be sent to a store manager who can then greet you by name, and guide you to the new range you have looked at carefully on your home computer. If you commented on how good a friend looked in that new-cut suit on Facebook, you could be guided to one on the rack.Similarly, having purchased locally made pasta on each of your last visits, you could receive a discount voucher to try the imported Italian version.As technology advances, ever more opportunities to entice, reward, and promote are available to retailers to get a greater share of your spend.Do shelves have eyes, staring at you? Of course. Does everything you interact with in the internet-of -things have this capability too? Of course. The value of this book lies in its comprehensive and insightful overview of the evolution of retailing, and its intriguing expose of the sophistication and use of advanced technologies today. And yes, you will be surprised at how everything is looking at you.Readability Light ---+- SeriousInsights High -+--- LowPractical High ---+- Low*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of the recently released Executive Update.

As a technology entrepreneur and attorney in the world of beacon technology and proximity marketing for local retailing, I am consistently searching for well written authoritative books, articles and blogs on the topic. Tremendous growth in this area is a forgone conclusion, for instance, most of the high powered forecasters of the world are predicting that beacon use in the US, will jump from about 7 million in service at the end of 2016, to over 400 million by 2020. I am sad to say, however, that there are very few really good publications on the topic (believe me I have looked). In this Dr. Turow’s “The Aisles Have Eyes” stands out as one of, if not the best book on the subject as it relates to the retail environment. The book has the most valuable information on latest developments on what some of the larger retailers and information gatherers are doing today with derived tracking inputs, and it puts this in historical context, based on the evolution of merchant retailing (this I found particularly enriching, as, if you know “where you have been” it’s much easier to envision where things might be going).For a non-technical book, it does a good job of relaying the most up to date technologies recently piloted and deployed by the most advanced retailers (this in itself, to me is worth the price). Also, in addition to a well-researched and clear account of where things are now for the largest “data miners,” (outside firms and retailing empires), Dr. Turow does an excellent job of laying out both the benefits and the downside to the consumer of this proximity tracking. In one respect (and the way I tend to look at it), on site, location based proximity marketing equips the small local merchant with the ultimate tools to survive “showrooming,” and the ever expanding online monopolies (not only from the Amazons of the world in direct sales competition, but the Googles, Facebooks, etc. that want to claim every advertising dollar), with the ability to promote a coupon or discount to an in-store (or passing by) shopper at the point of contact. The dark side though (which I have to admit I never really deeply thought about, until I read the book), is the ability to use this last piece of on-location data, match it with thousands of other bits of data, and, indeed, have such a complete profile that discriminatory pricing will be the norm (imagine, all items priced the way airlines price their wares, in subterfuge).In summary, if one has any interest at all in where location based proximity marketing (beacons, geo-fencing, camera identification) is today and where it is rapidly heading in the future, either as a retailer, a technology fan, or just as a conscientious consumer, this is a “must read” book, and in this is unique in the field.

I gave this book 4 stars but in a way it deserves either 3 or a 5. The subject matter of this book is terribly important, and the author Turow knows his subject thoroughly. I was frustrated, though, with the details of the marketing and data-gathering efforts I was forced to wade through to get to the last chapter (275 pages of text and 7 chapters). It is exhausting to be presented with yet another data-gathering firm and understand the subtle differences of what they do and how they do it and who what retailers they do it for. Exhausting!!! Turow displays the same tedious thoroughness in his 2011 book The Daily You. However, his conclusions and warnings regarding the invasion of our privacy, and the prejudicial profiles being developed on every one of us are words every single citizen should be completely versed in. We're fortunate that people like Joseph Turow take the time to understand just how invasive and opaque this data-gathering has already become. The best overview I've come across of this phenomena is Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. But this book is well worth reading, especially Chapter 7.

An excellent and frightening look at the future of retail.

Much of the data could have been tightened up and still would have maintained the same essence of the topic desired.

Excelente conteúdo, uma visão do que teremos pela frente. Uma abordagem interessante sobre a manipulação de dados transformando-os em informação.