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Showing posts from January, 2012

If a Product is Free, are you the Product? Part 2

A while ago, I wrote a post about how our use of social media can be advantageous in finding us special deals, helping us contact friends and find new jobs. In this post, I wanted to look at the other side of the coin. Namely, what do the companies offering us these free services and special deals get out of it? To start, let's look at one of the obvious and less technical uses of data products: Grocery Shopping! Shopping While this may seem rather simplistic, the use of shopping data linked to a loyalty card has been the clearest example of the power of data in creating strong product propositions. While many will talk about the potential of Facebook and Twitter (I'll come onto this in the future); the loyalty card has proven to be the best promotional tool available. So, we know that our shopping habits are collected when we use our Clubcard (Tesco), Advantage card (Boots) or our Costa Coffee card. The shopping habits of consumers have been tracked by supermarkets sin