In response to the Canadian Marketing Association’s blog, Crowd Sourced Couture: How Social Media Redesigned the Shopping Experience, I would have to say first and foremost it was an interesting read. The blog post diligently focuses on the effects of consumer trends displayed through social media as being the newest (and most influential) factor in personal purchasing decisions.

“A new layer has been added with the ability to see how popular a product is in-store according to what people are saying via social media.” This strategic analysis of consumer behaviour towards products when shopping in-store, both positively and negatively correlates an individual consumers response to a particular product based on how that product is perceived on social media outlets such as; Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. Stores, like Nordstorm, advertise how many “pins”, “likes”, and “retweets” an item receives on the virtual social world by hanging the statistics on clothing hangers, or displaying them by the products of subject.

What I guessed from reading this far into the blog, was that those products with more “likes”, and “pins” would be more likely to attract the buyer to want to purchase it. Why? Well simply (at least I thought), the more a product of any sort is liked and shared amongst peers, role models, and friends on social media, the more that particular product is more accepted. Therefore, the safer and more confident the customer would feel in purchasing that product. And although some results supported this automatic assumption, there were also negative correlation in sales to number of likes the product received on the internet.

In a world where individualism is becoming a prominent trend, and active factor in purchasing decisions, it should have been obvious. The more likes and tweets that a product receives – ultimately declaring the level of the product’s popularity – the less certain individual consumers saw that product as desirable. In fact, the more virtual likes the lesser in sales that item had, strictly due to the fact that people purposefully try to find ways to set themselves apart from what the majority of society views as “likeable”.

This blog by the Canadian Marketing Association, was definitely interesting, along with insightful. We always think of using social media to encourage online purchasing, not necessarily the other way around. Like in this article, where companies utilize social media for in-store purchasing encouragement. A new new layer of the purchasing cake that I’m sure, whether we know it or not, have all had a taste of.

As a responding blog to that of Tim Burke’s Someone’s Watching You, I could not agree more with the author’s finishing point, “I think that this is crossing the line, companies are gathering information on [consumers] then passing it around like a business card.” How are companies gathering information on you? Well, according to an ABC news-clip about a retail store located in San Francisco, through hidden cameras, and unauthorized documentation of personal details. That’s how.

There is a purpose to this madness. That is, both retail store managers and marketers alike use customers’ body and facial reaction (collected by the hidden cameras in mannequins) to see if their clientele is attracted or not to the store’s product supply. By further documenting your age, how long you were in the store, and what you bought at the register, business researchers can come to conclusions about what is trending, if prices are too high on some products, and can configure this information to feed the functional and psychological needs of the store’s target market.

But as an enthusiastic retail-therapy shopper, trust is part of the package of selling me your product. By invading to such an extensive degree on the personal privacy of your customers, you are not only risking their loyalty, but their trust in you as a supplier and retail individual in society. This kind of technology, though cheap, is being facilitated in a manner that is both degrading of personal privacy, and threatening in regards to customers’ sense of purchasing protection.

It is a practice that, in my opinion, should be pursued no further by marketers. It crosses the standard boundaries that are presumed by the customer, and that should be enforced by the retailer.