[propogandist]

There's an increasing amount of companies that are unfortunately using credit cards to track consumers. The only reliable option to 'opt-out' of tracking these days seems to be paying with cash.

I'm interested in hearing more about the point of sale tracking and facial recognition though. Was face recognition just being used to track customers around the store through to checkout? Or are you suggesting that 'face id' data was captured and shared alongside purchasing activity, tied to the individual to a 3rd party??

[sphinxpy]

At the time I left, which was 4 years ago roughly, the facial recognition was used at the checkout area only. The perational area going from the beginning of the gondolas (aisles) that are where you might say the back of a line would be, all the way to the exit doors.

This covered a large area but the only area using this at the time. The face ID system worked with the thermal mapping, which was used throughout the store, to create a projected customer volume for the front end management to prepare for. For instance the system tells the team that they have 1 register open but need 3 open now and 5 in 1 hour.

The data from the facial recognition cameras was sold, this I know for certain, however, I do not know to what amount that data was put into the specific customer profile being built. My honest impression is it was being sold in a package with card profiles to make a better product for brokers.

I've gone through meetings of how much this company wants to track you, how granular the specific customer profile was before the face & heat map system and the companies drive to find a place in the newer data markets that its competition was dealing in, in order to stay in business.

[propogandist]

this is facinating information. I hadn't thought retailers were this sophisticated with tracking users in-store, let alone few years ago. That said, the use case you've noted, like alerting where more registers are needed, make perfect sense.

The face recognition piece is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around. If they were selling facial recognition data to a 3rd party, and this is a common practice within the industry, there is (presumably) an intermediary that has a very comprehensive view of all consumer purchasing behavior in a given geography and can (potentially) track people in real-time.

Can you comment on some of the data brokers / tech players in this space [?] Is it the likes of acxiom? I've seen data being purchased where there's mastercard & visa purchase information, but it was all in aggregate and for silly things like banner advertising. I'm curious at who's in this space and how they're monetizing this data. It sounds like a (potential) goldmine for market researchers, marketers and manufacturers.

Also, were there any mechanisms to stop competing retailers from buying this data and luring away loyal customers?

[sphinxpy]

I'll do my best to with the information I have to answer.

Can I name specific players who are brokers/buyers?

To put it simply no, I was never made aware to whom the company sold this information to exactly. I would be highly interested to know the specifics of this part of chain as well. I was lower in the totem pole with friends and good relations further up that made me aware of the practices.

In my role, we were told details on the collection of information and how the company used it in house. Those higher up were made aware of the practices I mentioned earlier and through conversations with multiple people who would know, it was made abundantly clear that this was going on and our competition was participating in similar practices as well.

How was it monetized?

So specifically, I can speak to the rewards card aspect and what the profiles looked like to us and what I was told happens to them when sold. Although I'm sure you probably know, when I say "plus" card or "rewards" card, I am referring to an in-house system that the customer signs up for in the store with personal information which they are then given a card for that retailer which gives lower prices and "bonus" coupons sent by mail, until coupons moved to a digital format. Some retailers do it differently but with ours, it was almost a necessity to have it just to shop there due to price differences. It would be much more expensive to not use our card system .

When the customer signs up, they are asked Name, Age, Address and Phone Number. Scanning the card at checkout gave the customer those possible savings advertised on shelf as well as later on in its role, the customer would have E-coupons loaded directly on to the account that this card was tied, which were based off of the buying habits and influenced by seasonal changes.

It put a list of everything you ever bought and applied that to the information given upon signing up such as age and where you lived which gave information on the demographics of the customer(I am not sure if it was in-house or if this was a third party's work).

It was shortly before I left in about 2014 that we had meetings discussing just how much data was in the card holder profile. Again not sure if all this was done by them but we talked about buying habits, health and wellbeing status based on diet, income, frequency of trips, gasoline purchases in our fuel centers and major gasoline player who had a partnership with us and there was specifically a push for the card system to be moved over to an app that gave the company location data. This was something they really were pushing for at the time.

So these profiles of a customer were sold in bundles of groupings. Demographics of a certain type would be in this group or that group based on what they could ascertain through your buying habits and social standings with groups of similar incomes.

From my understanding people in multiple industries were buying this so that could utilize a subset of the data within the profile to target certain people or build a profile of a certain area to get better ideas of future business opportunities possibly coming to those locations and how to maximize their profits by tailoring the services to that area.

How it got to them and how it was applied with facial recognition data, I was not aware of, only that it was also being sold in some way. I did not know what if any rules there were on competitors data and how that was handled once it went to those buying this information. I know our competition had many of the same practices that probably built similar data sets but I am thinking there were ways to mitigate anything being given out that would give an edge to competition. I say that based on how we viewed and interacted with those other stores and my employer were obsessive of getting the smallest of advantage over everyone around them.

I am sorry this is so long but I wanted to give what I could in as much details as I had. Its a very interesting topic that people are shocked by when they learn about it. I also wish I could give exact players further along the supply chain but I don't have the facts on that specific although, as I said, I would be very interested to know myself.