I recently read an article posted on Adverblog titled “This store shelf is stalking you”.

Yes, it really is as creepy as it sounds. Allegedly, certain shelves in supermarkets such as Mondelez, are now able to detect the shopper’s identity, age, gender and other basic information thanks to Microsoft Kinect technology installed in the shelves.

The author did point out some of the benefits associated with this tactic. For instance, the data can be used to provide the customer with useful, personalized information (such as customized recipes). Each customer would presumably have a huge amount of data accumulated over time, and I can see and understand how this “scanning” strategy and the data the system collects can be extremely useful, for example to make future product recommendations based on the customer’s historical preferences.

The data collected would also be tremendously helpful to the companies, who could use the data to determine the most efficient and effective marketing strategies, thus lowering their costs and hopefully attracting more customers.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel that this is a huge violation of privacy. Companies would be able to keep track of you and everything you do. Imagine living in a world where the information on everything you have ever bought or considered buying is recorded, stored and analyzed by someone else? I personally would feel slightly uncomfortable with that fact, even if the only information that would be recorded is about my supermarket purchases.