Gathering information from the customers is increasingly becoming one of the main tools companies are using as an approach to customers’ real needs and insights. Having a consistent data gathering system could be the competitive advantage that differentiates a company from its competitors and, at the same time, give the organization the opportunity of satisfying the individual shoppers’ needs and insights, as well as gaining new customers.
According to the article “What Wal-Mart knows about customers’ habits” ‘Wal-Mart amasses more data about the products it sells and its shoppers’ buying habits than anyone else’. The way they obtain all this data about products and customers’ buying habits is through checkout scanners. Their managers also use wireless hand-held units to collect more data. I guess this device is directly connected to the main system to which they can add what a customer asks in a certain moment to an employee (e.g. information about a specific product).
However, the way I see it, Wal-Mart is more focused on the products sold in the stores than on the preferences each customer has. It is a reality that they collect an enormous amount of data of the preferences the customers have of their products but, in general, without specializing in their clients individually. This particular theory has, from my point of view, some advantages as well as disadvantages. As it is mentioned in the article, with this method they have the opportunity of meeting one of Wal-Mart’s goals which is avoiding having too much inventory or not enough. At the same time they can let the suppliers know whether their products are being sold or not. On the other hand, they lose the opportunity of approaching the customers’ interests in an individually manner and address them with a personalized offer. The proper way to obtain this would be implementing a loyalty program through a loyalty card. However, according to Wal-Mart this would imply an increase in their costs so they are not really interested in this method. But my point is… having in mind that Wal-Mart is currently the company which has collected most data from their sold products and their customers’ habits, why don´t extend this leadership position? I mean…Why couldn´t the company try to collect the maximum information about customers individually and be the leaders also in this field? From my point of view, having this loyalty card the quality of the approach to the customers and the personalized offer will clearly improve.
Another important issue to discuss is to what extent the companies keep and use data they obtain from the customers for their own benefit, how they use it or, what is more, to what extent we are aware of the personal information they have and use.
Many companies consider that there is no reason for worrying because their privacy policies protect consumers’ names and other type of personal information. Besides, they think the data gathering is also beneficial for consumers pointing out that it is a way to improve their knowledge about customers’ real needs.
On the other hand, we have to take into account that a new technology revolution is emerging and is capable to gather massive amounts of data, something that traditional communication channels are not able to do.
Curiously, consumers have not reacted against this phenomenon but probably it is due to the fact that the majority is not conscious of what the companies are doing with our private information. The reason of this is because the majority of companies do not let people know what, when and for what they are gathering our information.
The problem becomes aggravate if we consider that lately some internet giants (such as Google, Yahoo…) are acting as intermediaries with several companies. They capture a lot of information about ourselves and provide it to organizations so we cannot even imagine who is now using our personal data to make their market study, for example.
It is obvious that customers need more protection from the authorities or at least more information from the companies about how they are using our personal data. This is not about a perception or a point of view; it is just about letting customers choose what they want to share with the companies in which they are investing their money. As I see it, this is a primary right everyone deserves: to be able to keep our personal information in private.
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