Retailers Are Tracking Their Customers

Retailers are tracking their Customers

Retailers are keeping track of shoppers' movements inside their stores by signals from their cell phones. Nusanced Restaurants' new venture to track customers using GPS is much like this. Many customers are becoming very vocal with negative reactions to this practice, whereas they have a passive reaction to the collection of data collection done by online stores (Lory, 2013). Advocates for this type of tracking believe that retailers have the same rights as online stores to monitor what their customers are buying and their behavior while in their stores.

Tracking customers may seem like an invasion of privacy but companies are offering cash and prepaid gift cards in exchange for letting them track them (Dickey, 2013). This seems to ease the customers concerns of being tracked if retailers were to offer deals and discounts.

Internet companies like the one Nusanced Restaurants have partnered with will be able to capture the rate of passerbys that actually walk in the store, changes in foot traffic, how long they spend in the store, repeat versus new customers and behavior inside the store (Dickey, 2013). The ethical issue facing Nuanced Restaurants is confidentially of the information that is collected with tracking their customers. Will Nuanced Restaurants collect personal information like customers' names, addresses and credit card numbers? If they are then the question is how will they use this information and who will have access to it?

Nuanced Restaurants must be careful with the data that they collect. But until there are specific laws to regulate this type of data collection, we as consumers have to realize this form of tracking has become reality in a world where technology is changing the way we perform almost every aspect of our daily lives. With the new smartphones, we are like forever giving anyone the opportunity to know more about us than we care to give, so the best solution is to turn off the phones.

References:

Dickey, M. R. (2013, July 15). Get ready to be tracked next time you go shopping. Retrieved July 16, 2013, from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/retailers-track-customers-2013-7

Lory. (2013, July 15). Retailers track customer shopping using Wi-Fi. Retrieved July 16, 2013, from Padgadget.com: http://www.padgadget.com/2013/07/15/retailers-track-customers-shopping-habits-using-wi-fi-signals