Always Watching

By Gregg Miller
August 12, 2009

The advent of the digital age and the ease of data storage and collection have been a true blessing for the market research industry. It’s easier than ever to get a glimpse of what consumers are doing simply by looking at web traffic statistics for different sites. The success of an online ad is at least partly visible in the number of clicks it gets. And to answer questions that cannot be resolved by direct observation, online survey distribution has allowed for cheaper and faster data collection than ever before.
Geomentum, a new unit of Mediabrands (itself an ad-buying and planning division of the Interpublic Group) is harnessing the potential of the digital age to an even greater degree. Their initiative is to monitor and predict consumer behavior at a local level – all the way down to an individual city block, or even, the company speculates, an individual household.
To realize such lofty goals Geomentum plans to tap into the consumer purchase histories of specific companies. CVS was cited as a party interested in Geomentum’s new services. The huge convenience store chain will give Geomentum access to the records it has been building since the introduction of its CVS card. Every time a customer uses their card for a purchase, they are not only saving money, but also filling up a CVS data file with their name and address on it. The amount of consumer purchase data out there is enormous. Think of the number or companies that collect the names and addresses of their consumers, either indirectly via a loyalty or membership card like CVS or Costco, or directly through direct query like Amazon.com.
Geomentum’s pitch is that by compiling this data they cannot only monitor consumer trends at a very local level, but also leverage this information to develop highly targeted local advertising. One example of how this would become manifest is through the distribution of targeted coupons. If a city block in New York was seen to be purchasing more Tide detergent than the block just to the north, this block might receive Tide coupons to CVS to drive them into the store while the northern block – uninterested in the benefits of Tide detergent – would not.
But here arises the fundamental question such a prospect demands: is this a good thing? For market researchers, more consumer data is almost always better – without it we couldn’t do our jobs. But is there an ethical line where details of consumers’ lives should not be known or investigated? Is the highly detailed statistical analysis of the individual a form of invisible personal shopper, or instead a gross systemization of humanity? What are your thoughts on where Geomentum is taking advertising, and what kind of limits should we establish in the market research industry, if any?
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