Anytime
you use a credit card or loyalty card, give out your zip code or phone number,
or use a coupon you are giving away personal information about yourself. Using technology companies can now take your
information from you and use it to their advantage. Target has found a great way to do this if
you don’t mind having your privacy being diminished.
A
man found out the hard way about Target’s statistics when he walked in to a
Target store demanding to speak to the manager about why they were sending his
teenage daughter, who was still in high school at the time, coupons for baby
items.
“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.
(Nice customer
service, Target.)
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.”
“If we send
someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve
never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people
uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are very conservative about compliance with
all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where
people get queasy.”
The
New York Times wrote an article on how personal information these days is like gold
to marketing departments. Being able to send coupons to customers who are
pregnant can push them to buy all of their products at Target, maybe even do their
registries there.
The desire to
collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large
retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on
every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. Whenever possible,
Target assigns each shopper a unique code — known internally as the Guest ID
number — that keeps tabs on everything they buy. “If you use a credit card or a
coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help
line, or open an e-mail we’ve sent you or visit our Web site, we’ll record it
and link it to your Guest ID,” Pole said. “We want to know everything we can.”
Also linked to
your Guest ID is demographic information like your age, whether you are married
and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive
to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit
cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit. Target can buy
data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever
declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house,
where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether
you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, your
political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars
you own. -- The New York Times
What do you think of this?
Sources:
The New York Times
Forbes Magazine
