You’re Tagged And Analyzed

You walked in a supermarket looking for a pack of tissue as you are probably suffering from colds or for variety of reasons you need to get a tissue from that supermarket as it is the nearest store from you according to your location finder services or digital maps and GPS.

However, you spent thirty minutes walking around the supermarket searching for the tissues section and you walked away empty handed as you went impatient and just decided to search and try your luck from other shops.

You ended up frustrated and the supermarket may have loose their opportunity for you to be their loyal customer.

If the supermarket would have just placed some retails of facial tissues within the cashier counter you would have noticed it and bought it and you will praise the marketing of the supermarket as they have done good job and satisfied your need at that moment.

Analyzing what happened would lead us to realize that there was the gap between the customer and the business. There is the probability that the supermarket didn’t have a built in analytics system in their process.

Analytics – the process of solving problems based on existing set of data has been used by technology to solve business problems and create competitive advantage.

Majority of the business players invest in analytics software in order to analyze their customers, create trends, and most of all discover new demographics.

Caesar Salad with grilled chicken at Mc Donald’s in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Now this encounter is impressive.

It is all about consumer behavior and patterns.

And technology has been evolving consistently to support the business demands.

Previously the analysis has been based on structured data – age, location, behavior, race, etc. However, as the business competition is getting tougher, technology has evolved and now supports unstructured data for analysis. The term ‘unstructured data’ is referring to blogs and videos to name a few.

Now the method of consumer analysis can start

1. From the moment that you walk in the supermarket looking for your items.
2. From the items that you need you are choosing from different brands. While choosing you may have been analyzed by the brand names that implements the video analytics.
3. When you pick up the item it is a different record of event and
4. when you decided to buy the item it is tagged as different event.

When it is the first time that you choose your credit card to purchase online, your bank suddenly called you in a matter of minutes to confirm if you really made the transaction. That is analytics in the move and the technology supports it to analyze it in milliseconds or seconds to provide fraud detection.

As all of these are happening it is a great feeling that our technology can keep up and business is there to provide us with better service and satisfaction. The downside of which is the issue on privacy as consumers.

Who are you? This is my nephew giving me his inquisitive look during my birthday celebration in Germany, September 2010.

Though privacy issues created commotion due to internet cookies detected to collect surfing data and other personal data, it is still undeniable that our personal data maybe roaming somewhere being analyzed as which demographics we belong and what regression model would suit and fit us so the business can create advantage and maintain competition.

Privacy issue is always undeniable in the digital world. And our behavior or pattern are the key to business and as well as government in providing security and welfare.

And so, we are tagged and being analyzed.

And if we do not want to be located for whatever reason… the best way to do it is to shut off the mobile phone. (wink).

This is me while gearing up and competing with in the market space of analytics technology.

Til next time. Au revoir.