In “Big Brother is Watching You Shop” (Bloomberg Businessweek, December 15, 2011), you can read about retailers using in-store video cameras and tracking your cell phone to better understand how you move through a retail store.  Analyzing video from a Miami store allowed Montblanc managers to more strategically locate merchandising, signage, and salespeople.  The result — a 20% bump in sales.  Other retailers follow customers’ cell phone signals to track and map movement through stores.  This of course is raising privacy concerns.

These two stories can be useful examples for marketing research (where we cover dashboards and marketing models), retailing, and in discussions of privacy.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Is the future of online advertising one of incredibly targeted advertising based on your interests, online activities and Facebook “likes,” or is it one dictated by robust privacy controls that keep those details out of the hands of marketers?

This article at CNN.com “‘Like’ it or not, online ads are getting personal” (January 31, 2011) starts by asking this question.  It seems to me that many of our students care very little about their personal privacy.  The article describes behavioral advertising and notes that the Federal Trade Commission is considering a “Do Not Track” list similar to the “Do Not Call” list created to curb telemarketing.  It looks like the browser makers are getting out in front of the issue by creating the “no track” option — Microsoft Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox offer the opportunity to “opt out” of behavioral tracking, few users are likely to select this option (that assumes the default is that you will be tracked — but that is another issue). Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

This issue raises important questions about ethics and legal issues in marketing, privacy, technology, and promotion.

We have just finished up the next edition of Basic Marketing which includes our take on this transformation and how it fits into teaching the introductory marketing class.  Look for the book in October.

[UPDATE, May 9, 2010]  Maybe I spoke too soon — or I am biased by my 16 and 18-year old kids.  Shortly after I wrote this post, I read a New York Times article, “Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline,” (May 8, 2010) that gives me hope that our students are becoming more cautious with their online privacy.