Gathering data from a customer online is easy and makes companies like Amazon thrive. Whereas offline retail stores lack the level of data that enables them to better improve staffing, layout, and marketing tactics.
Some stores have utilized information technology to the next level. In a recent article on the Huffington Post, it stated that Hugo Boss has implemented heat sensors to measure the activity of customers to better place premium products. As well, Tesco has implemented face scanners at gas stations to scan the faces of queuing customers to determine gender and age to personalize advertisements.
How Tesco’s face-scanning technology will work:
I can say for the majority of people, most of us value our personal privacy and would not appreciate the tactics that stores are using to compete with online retailers. While I acknowledge that we are ever growingly being preyed online regarding our privacy, those methods are far more tolerable because no parts of our body or phones are being traced or documented. Offline retail stores need to implement information technology that complies with customers’ privacies in order to retain their brand image and decrease the risk of losing customers. However, it is likely that if majority of stores implement such tactics in the future and becomes widely accepted or inevitable, these new management information systems will serve to bridge the gap between offline and online store competition.
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