[discreteevent]

I'm not the parent commenter but:

- do you know that loyalty cards are often used in stores to collect customer data (a kind of offline cookie)? do you consider it a bad/dangerous/unethical or does it sound ok for you?

Yes I do know that loyalty cards are used to collect data. I think most people do. I don't take loyalty cards for this reason and I'm glad that they are opt in although there is some financial pressure to take them.

- if instead of a camera there was a person looking at customers and recording his observation, would you feel bad about it?

I would feel bad about it and I think the person should ask my permission first.

[ffriend]

> I would feel bad about it and I think the person should ask my permission first.

But if that person just memorizes customer reactions to understand how people on average react to particular products or actions, that's ok, right? Because this is what sellers and business owners do to improve their product. So is it about human-to-human interaction or some more subtle detail? I'm biased here, so sorry if I miss something obvious in this situation.

[abalone]

It's not subtle. If there was an employee standing next to you or following you around the store with a clipboard taking notes on you and your facial expressions, only then would you have something approaching an apples to apples comparison. Stop pretending that's normally "what sellers and owners do" and you're just automating it. Customers Do Not Want.