Marketing, Data, and Predictions

Over at Forbes.com, there’s a really interesting article about how companies can make predictions about your life and life-events, based purely on your buying habits.

In this case, the US store Target did analysis on its customers who signed up for their ‘pregnancy club’, and then data-mined their buying habits in the run-up to the birth. Of course, you need something to identify these people by – that’s what ‘loyalty’ cards are for. (Tesco’s Clubcard, Sainsbury’s’ Nectar etc. etc)

And of course it turns out that they could then send out marketing to those people – in one case, knowing a girl was pregnant before her own father did.

It’s always worth remembering, stores don’t give you loyalty cards and ‘rewards’ for nothing. They own all the data about you that the cards give – what you’re buying, why, when, where etc. – and they’re using that for their own profitability.

As David Mitchell said, (and I think I’ve posted it here before) :

When you’re getting something free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

Updated : A quick add – this was also something written about in the New York Times Magazine article ‘How Companies Learn Your Secrets‘