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Tracking Down Customers: Where's the Line?

We all know by now that companies track our habits and try to gather as much data about us as a customer as they possibly can. Whether it’s your favorite online flash sale boutique asking for your mobile number to alert you about the next big sale or a fast-food brand encouraging you to follow them on Twitter, brands want to add another way to connect with you and find out more about your habits. But in those two scenarios, what’s the common thread? Permission.

When you want to receive an email or SMS, you opt-in to receive these communications. You’re saying that you trust the sender of these messages, and know enough about them that they won’t abuse the data you provide them with. The relationship is arguably one in which the customer gives more than takes, but you have decided that your data is worth getting notified of the next sale, discount, coupon, or special offer. Knowing that this is why we as customers decide to enter into a relationship with the brands we love, how do you think you, a customer, would feel if you found out a company has been collecting data from you that hasn’t been offered up? A few words come to mind. Betrayed. Hurt. Angry. But prepare yourself, because that’s just what newcomer Nomi is already doing.

It may come as a shock, but Nomi, a retail-tracking startup based in New York City, is testing technology that monitors the activity of shoppers through their mobile phones. They hope to not only track your presence in a store, but how long you spent there, what departments you visited, and what displays might have influenced your purchase. Currently, Nomi collects the ID of your mobile device through a store’s WiFi network or small sensors that track signals from your mobile device. Then they use this data to identify spatial relationships on consumer footpaths. The customer is never made aware that they are being tracked. When you enter a store using Nomi’s technology, you are automatically opted-in.

Photo by chokola, via Flickr

Should customers have to opt-in to allow Nomi to collect their data? Some stores already using the technology don’t think so. They claim that the unique mobile device IDs are never connected to personal information. However, Nomi has said that they are looking into an opt-in only system in the future, where customers will receive a discount or deal for opting-in.

Would a special offer from your favorite store be enough to make you hand over data that can be used to track your every move? Is retail-tracking the wave of the future? Let us know in the comments.