How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Retail stores gather a lot of information on each customer. Do you use a discount card, credit card, or email address when you shop? If so, the store is able to keep track of everything you buy, and use that information to target their advertising specifically to your tastes. For example, Target hired Andrew Pole to crunch the numbers and analyze how a person's shopping habits can predict what they are most likely to purchase in the future. The data showed that certain purchases can indicate which customers are expecting a baby, and furthermore when they are most likely to deliver!
About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

The New York Times has an extensive article explaining how stores gather, decode, and use your shopping habits to make more sales. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Antonio Bolfo/Reportage for The New York Times)

Comments (4)

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Newest 4 Comments

That's why I go around buying a lot of random crap that I don't want...just to throw off the algorithms. Plus, I'm helping the economy - WIN/WIN!!!
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Her Doctor can't tell her parents she's pregnant, but the Baby Bottle and diaper guy can. Just like, you can't discuss a patient in public under HIPAA, but your Bank can tell anyone they want to about your finances.
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Clamps from Futurama is missing one of his hands and it ended up here.

http://www.gotfuturama.com/Information/CharacterBios/clamps.dhtml

Shark Attack Mug
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a clamp for securing / stabilizing debris after an accident for rescue / cleanup efforts... would be safer with a closed eylet..

Chemist's Glassware ladie's fit 2xl
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The object is a part of a robotic crocodile built for Peter the Great by an expatriate French blacksmith. The iron crocodile was to be the villain's assistant. Unfortunately the full text of the play was lost in the Great Fire.

Office guy, extra large, gigantic you got it.
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Wheel clamp used by parking wardens to put on toddler tricycles at expired parking meters in front of the local Gymboree.

MMM.....Pi, Serene Green, Ladies L
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If you look carefully you can see the Cisco logo on the side of the jaws: this was their very first "router" ever sold. You could route your telegraph wires through the jaws, turn 90 degrees up, cross the road at a convenient point, then route the wires back down the other side, all without crossing wires. Cisco still makes routers today but they aren't cast out of iron any more. They just don't build them to last like they used to...

If selected, a donation to your local humane society would be superb. :)
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"That's my great grand-daddy's left clamp! Oh if I ever get my clamps on whoever took it I will give 'em such a clamping!" ~Clamps from Futurama

Look out shroedingers cat = lrg blk thanks
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This is a device used by linemen long ago to pull wire. It would be clamped to the top of a pole beam,and the wire laid thru the slot and pulled down to the next pole. These were temporary and would be removed after the line was secured to the insulator.
protect your nuts,2xl
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This was the first of the avon products for ladies to style their hair. It would be heated on the stove and the hair placed into the zig-zag section to make "crimped" hair styles. It quickly fell out of favor to the "flat iron" hairstyle look.
protect your nuts,2 xl
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This is a device used by the IRS to hang a person by their toes(or anything else) to get payment for taxes owed. (I don't get it, this is not an antique, it's still in use today).
protect your nuts,2xl
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The "Definitely Not a Multi-Purpose Tool". And if you keep posting pics of it, it will magically become an essential item in many hipster's daily carry bag.

Schrodinger's Cat: Wanted Dead And/Or Alive
Chocolate
Large
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That is an artifact that was uncovered in New York. It is one of Clamps' clamp. Thus proving that Futurama not only is true, but instead happened in the past and that time and space just repeats itself.

What happens at Grandma's Large/blue
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Its a paperclip that meets government design specs. It costs 289.47 and a special license to own and operate. We have boxes of these around my office, and only a few of us know what they are.

T shirt: Its as bad as you think, Black XL
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