A new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, is packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place......
Saturday, April 17, 2010
What do web coupons know about you?
This article sheds more insights into the power of data and the growing role of privacy in the network era. may be the following paragraph is enough to urge you to read the full article..
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I just logged onto the blog to post that exact article but you beat me to it! I find this fascinating, slightly "big-brother"-esque and yet another example of the sheer amount of data that is/will be available on consumers in the coming years. Are all companies going to have become data mining experts in order to survive? Will such detailed information necessarily lead to a better retail experience for the consumer, or more customers for the retailer?
ReplyDeleteThis article makes me think that people are going to start setting up different profiles online to do different activities. I remember when the big thing was to set up spam email accounts so that if a company spammed you or sold your email address, it was ok because you never really checked that account anyway. I actually still have different email accounts that I do different things with. If coupons will start keeping track of who you are and how you found them, I could see some people taking measures to counteract it. Perhaps they clear their browser cache before going to a website. Or perhaps they search for the coupon in one browser window but then copy/paste the link into another browser window. Or perhaps Mozilla will be used for real surfing and IE will be used for spam surfing. Either way, I think it is important to remember that while it is scary to think of all the privacy infringements companies are moving toward, it is reassuring to think that consumers are savvy and well connected with each other and all it takes is one person to figure out a loophole and within seconds it can be shared and replicated.
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