Introduction

When the needs of retail businesses and consumers are aligned, both can win. Retailers want our loyalty. They want us to buy from their stores more efficiently and in ways that are less costly to them. Deeper knowledge of what we buy and how we buy it will provide them with much needed insight.

Using Inescapable Data technologies, shrinkage can be more tightly controlled resulting in lower costs for consumers and higher value for stockholders. Digital video-surveillance cameras can watch us both as shoppers (to better understand our shopping patterns) and as store employees, tying video images to corporate goals. Volumes of new data on each of us as consumers can now be collected by Inescapable Data collection techniquesboth at the checkout isle and while in the store or online. If it can be measured, retailers will measure it, and the data will be exploited. Inescapable Data collection devices will feed this new data to back-end systems, enabling retailers to achieve unprecedented efficienciesfocusing on products that will actually sell, streamlining the process aspects, and directly targeting marketing efforts to appropriate buyers.

To realize these efficiencies, retailers must first entice us into their newly retooled stores, and then keep us as loyal customers after the sale. To do so, they will have to offer greater levels of personalization, customization, and value. If we demand more personalization and efficiency, Inescapable Data technologies will enable that kind of shopping experience, and we will find savvy retail businesses that can fulfill our desires.

However, at the same time, we are already seeing evidence that many of us may become wary, if not downright fearful, of a concurrent loss of personal privacy. When we enter a store equipped with video-surveillance, GPS, and RFID technologies, our movements and our individual product selections can be tracked in real time. The in-store system will be watching. Will we as consumers thrive in this new shopping environment and use it to our advantage, or see it as an unwelcome intrusion into our personal lives and privacy that reminds us more of Orwell's Big Brother?