Are You Pregnant? Target Knows

This is one of those stories that is all over the Internet, but didn’t seem to get all that much attention in the main stream media. An incensed father of a teenaged girl walked into a nearby Target store, demanding to see the manager. Waving a handful of coupons for baby clothes, cribs, and such things, he accused the manager and the Target chain of promoting teenaged pregnancy. In a couple of weeks the father returned to the store to apologize to the manager. Turns out his daughter was, indeed, pregnant.

They are watching you, every time you walk into their store. They have more time and money to study you and modify your behavior than you have to study them. They even have a given this field of study a name, predictive analytics. It is being used by politicians, football coaches, as well as every major retailer in America. The ultimate goal, the brass ring of this discipline is identifying and capturing your mind at key turning points in your life, when you break old patterns and start new patterns. If they lock you into a new pattern, they have you for years. When we are presented with a new challenge, like running a maze for a piece of cheese, our brains are working overtime. We are presented with a trigger, the maze, then we begin an activity, exploring the maze, this results in a reward, cheese. As we are repeatedly exposed to this same pattern, over time we put our brains on autopilot, just living and reliving the activities of everyday life.

One of these lifetime sales opportunities occurs when a woman is expecting the birth of her first baby. By the time she actually has the baby, it is too late. Everybody and their brother are sending her catalogues and advertisements. How does a store determine when a woman is early in the second trimester of her first pregnancy? Andrew Pole was hired by Target to answer that question. As Pole analyzed the data stored in Target’s enormous computer data bases, he identified 25 purchasing patterns that signaled pregnancy. If she is buying scent free soap, zinc and magnesium supplements, cocoa-butter lotion, and things like a large purse (that could be used as a diaper bag) Target can assign an accurate numerical probability to her condition.

If you have ever shopped at Target using anything other than cash to pay for your purchases, the company has assigned you a Guest ID Number. They are associating all your behaviors with their goals. They know when to send you coupons. They know how to trigger an associated reward, like giving you a coupon for a free cup of Starbucks Coffee. They know more about your shopping behaviors than you know because most of your activities are unconscious habits. Their computers never sleep.

There is no need to be paranoid. They are just doing their jobs. However, I would encourage you to be a little more conscious when you are doing your weekly shopping. Think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. When you see those coupons and special offers on the back of register tapes, ask why did they do that? Treat these people with the respect they deserve. They want your money and they know how to get it.

The best article I found on this subject is “How Companies Learn Your Secrets” by Charles Duhigg published by the New York Times. Check it out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all