Grocery Shelves Will Now be Spying on Us

As if we don’t have enough to worry about, now we need to start thinking about being spied on while we do our grocery shopping.  Food giant Mondelez International, parent company of Nabisco, Kraft and Cadbury, is said to be planning on introducing “smart shelves” to grocery stores by the year 2015. 

Working with Microsoft Kinect, Mondelez International is said to be working on a system to identify shoppers walking down the food aisle.  Using facial recognition, these “smart shelves” will be able to identify shoppers by age and gender.  Once identified, a coupon will appear near a food or snack targeted to that particular shopper.  For example:  If a woman in her early 30s walks by, there’s a good chance she may be thinking about chocolate.  As she approaches the shelf for Cadbury chocolates, a coupon will pop up.

Along with facial recognition, the smart shelves will also have weight sensors installed.  This way, if a shopper over the age of 18 picks a box up from the shelf, a coupon could be sent to “persuade” the shopper into buying that product.  The coupon will come by way of either a dispenser or a display screen.  Tech writer Brian Fung of the Washington Post says of this technology, “it’s not quite Minority Report levels of creepiness, but it’s getting there.”, while Neal Ungerleider of Fastcompany.com said it’s “the ultimate in creepy, yet inevitable marketing tech.”  Personally, I have to agree with Neal about it being the ultimate in creepy.

According to Mondelez’s CIO Mark Dajani, no videos or photos of specific shoppers will be saved.  The information will only be used to collect information about the types of shoppers looking at the products or walking down the grocery store aisles.  It could help food companies with product placement so as to maximize sales.

If this experiment proves to be a success, it won’t take long for other companies to follow suit.  Soon, we could expect to see these smart shelves all over grocery stores and maybe even in large department stores.  The possibilities are endless.  But then, the success can only be measured by consumer response.  If consumers don’t like the idea of being “spied” on by grocery shelves, the plan could backfire and cause a loss of sales.  

When this experiment starts in 2015, will you change your shopping habits?  Already there is talk about how to “fool” the cameras.  There has been talk about wearing disguises when going shopping, but is the effort really worth it?  As consumers, we can either accept the fact that our privacy will be stolen by technology or we can refuse to give in to the high-tech marketing ploys such as smart shelves.  We do have the choice to not buy products from companies that use facial recognition in order to target us and entice us with discounts.

It seems that every day, something new comes along to take away our privacy.  Sometimes, it seems impossible to avoid, but there are some things you can do to keep your privacy safe.  Please take a few minutes to download the Privacy Guide located at the top of this page.   It’s completely free and there’s no risk involved, but there are suggestions in it that may help you to understand how you can stay private on-line and off.