Customer Profiling: Creepy Sales Strategy Evolving [Infographic]

The Internet is a constantly changing organism, and each one of us is part of its evolution. Changes can happen overnight, and trends come and go at a lightning fast pace, but that’s not the only part of the world that is changing fast. When you go to the store to buy things, you might think everything is the same and that you are just a customer buying groceries, clothes or whatever else you are purchasing. Our perception has always been that we can go into any store and buy what we want without having to worry about what our purchase might mean for the store or whether or not it’s being tracked in some way. Well, that has changed too. While we may be clueless to what’s going on behind the scenes, there is a certain kind of customer profiling that is going on which is quite intense and extensive.

A new infographic from Camcode called You Are Not Special But Your Purchases Are reveals some rather disturbing information. The new strategy that stores use to make sure they sell more stuff is simply based on what we buy. This new form of customer profiling is an advanced way of looking through your purchases and then creating data in the form of customer profiling about you, which they add to a database. After collecting enough data, they can run through it and get all kinds of suggestions about how to further increase their sales. They get information regarding what items don’t sell well with the customers they have coming into the store, and which items they need to increase their selection for.

Not only will they be able to pull all this data from their continuous customer profiling, but the reality is that they are targeting certain customers with specific coupons as well. Yes, what you probably didn’t know is that the person next to you in the same isle as you might be paying up to 30% less for the same product that you just put in your cart. There are a lot of these things going on behind the scenes all thanks to this new customer profiling approach. They are things you probably don’t really know about when you are in the store buying your stuff. Do you feel cheated by this? Well, a poll revealed that as much as 76% of people asked were bothered that someone might pay less for the same product just because of this new customer profiling research.

I think the big question is how far they can take this customer profiling in order to make money. Is it a legit way of conducting business, or is it legitimately cheating their unsuspecting customers? I guess you, their customers, will have to decide that one. Another thing that you probably didn’t know is that any store can and will sell your customer profile to whatever buyer they feel like selling it to. Does that bother you? Well, it certainly bothers me knowing I am being treated like a commodity while I might be paying up to 30% more for the same product that someone else got a coupon for. Shopping just got a whole lot more advanced, and there are a lot more things to think about when you hit the store. Does it bother me? I guess I would have to answer yes to that question.

Customer Profiling & What You Probably Didn’t Know

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