@Ookie,
I share many of your sentiments. Retail is investing a lot of thought, effort and money in tracking consumers.
We all know RFID is catching on. In a previous life, I was involved with RFID and large retailers. RFID tags on items help with keeping inventory accurate, tracking the location of material in warehouses and the retail floor, and with checkout. Retailers demand first: RFID on pallets of goods, 2nd: the boxes on the pallet, and 3rd: on the individual items (if they're expensive enough). Unlike UPC, each RFID tag is unique, the so-called sociaal security number for every pallet, box, and increasingly, item. Manufacturers use RFID on the item to help track the items on the factory floor as they're being assembled.
Enough of the background info. Here's something a certain retailer was interested in installing years ago.
Say a pair of shoes has an embedded RFID tag, buried within the shoe by the manufacturer during shoe assembly. The retailer scans the RFID of the shoes during the checkout and payment process. The shoes are now linked to that particular customer. When the customer wears the shoes on a future trip to the retailer, an RFID scanner in the doorway of the store reads the RFID tags. The retailer knows that Joe Smith just entered the store. When he enters the dressing room, the retailer knows it's Joe Smith, and his history of recent purchases. The dressing room knows what clothing items Joe carried in to try on, due to RFID in the item, or on the "hang tag" that has size and price on it. A flat panel in the dressing room will make suggestions for other clothing items (or other colors) that compliment the item Joe is considering, and shows images of the suggestions on a male (not a female, since it's "Joe"). It makes for a "better shopping experience" says the retailer. Hmmm
True story: A guy slipped on spilled yogurt in the dairy section of a supermarket. He fell, got injured, and needed medical help. A few days later, he received a letter from the retailer. It stated that if he was considering asking for damages or filing a lawsuit, the retailer would have no choice but to reveal how much alcohol he regularly purchased. And that his fall might be due to being intoxicated, and not the store's fault. Point is: The retailer used the customer's purchase history in a preemptive manner to intimidate him. I never looked at "customer loyalty cards" the same way after that.
Las Vegas casinos are a big user of FD. They want to know when a "whale" (their term for big spenders) enters the casino. Then the casino sends a host or hostess to provide services (hassle free check-in, gambling chips, their favorite drink, and escorted towards the VIP gambling rooms.
Also casinos want to know when banned people have entered (card counters, cheaters, past trouble-makers, etc). Or police or gaming authorities.
The casinos are looking into sharing FD databases (but they won't share the whales faces because the big spender info is "proprietary").
Even though we were making custom auto-id equipment for the casinos, they would only talk in general terms how it fit into their bigger system. They'd wink and say "you'd be amazed at what we're doing".
Fastb
