Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Video Chain Cashes in on Mobile Internet
Matthew Rothenberg writes: "CIO Insight has a case study that describes how Tokyo's Tsutaya video stores are tracking their users' shopping habits in real time via NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode wireless services and devices. 'We're not interested in merely renting videos to people,' Tsutaya founder Muneaki Masuda says. 'We're collecting lifestyle information, and the possibilities of that are, over time, enormous.'"
Fist?
GTRacer
Could it be?
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
I don't live in Japan. Where do I not sign up?
I'm going to start bar coding my customers.
Kiss my bass.
I guess I won't rent that copy of "Dude, Wheres my car."
Not everyone deserves a 320i
At what point do the marketing types realize there is a growing segment of the population that 1)actively works to avoid having their "lifestyle information" harvested, and 2)rarely- if ever - does things like click on ads, respond to junk mail or spam, or otherwise do anything that this stuff would help?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Since everyone will be up in arms about video stores collecting personal information and surfing habits.
Not all data collection is bad, just often abused, though.
I don't know about anybody else but the idea of ANYBODY tracking my habits of shopping, roaming or just plain anything else spooks me.
I don't like the idea of anybody keeping track of what I do even though I'm not doing anything illegal.
The worst part is that corporations only have 1 thing in mind and that's the almight dollar ( or Yen in this case ) and so they'll do anything to make a buck... including selling this kind of information.
The kind of fear I have of that??? enormouse
Blockbuster baby. They have your info, they have your credit card, they have your address.
Don't think for a minute they don't track and sell the info about what you rent.
I think that studying people's lifestyles with out them knowing by tracking what they watch is trash. Why can't people mind their own business.
-voices for choices
homas?
habbadaggas.
zo-con-tar.
'We're collecting lifestyle information, and the possibilities of that are, over time, enormous.'
Technology isn't evil, but people are. We all know exactly where this is going..
...will this mean less sales of bukake films or more?
...it will probably be replicated in other areas of the world. What with the 3G networks rolling out here in the US this kind of stuff could get really pervasive.
Imagine the amout of targeted spam, junkmail that is focused on our shopping habits. Sure its done now, but this would really make it worse than it is already.
thelikesofwhich.com
sounds like a japanese doubleclick to me, except they can now get info on you anytime anywhere...
ahh, the egg in the basket..
stores?
After all, can't Japanese pay utility bills and purchase phone cards at conveinence stores? I'd think this would be a great place to collect info since you can link bill payments, phone usage (to an extent) and impulse buys all from one place.
Maybe it'd also spur asset management software since that seems to be one of the central techs behind TOL. It's like being e-mailed books Barnes adn Nobles thinks you'd like and telling you they have 3 in stock at various San Diego bookstores.
I have to write in as Anon Coward because this breaks an NDA, but there is already a large USA video rental chain (gee guess who) that is doing this, and planning on implementing this with wireless devices in the near future.
"...the possibilities of that are, over time, enormous." ah, I think they meant ominous
This was a great article filled with buzz words managerial biz-speak, and its great that there is this sprawling wireless tracking service,
but has this been useful? Are there any measured improvements in sales?
And more importantly, how have the users reacted? Oh yeah, yr always gonna get those privacy zealots, but what about everyone else? Do they just shrug it off? Do they hate it? Or are they actually using it?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
hello big brother. how are you today?
Either Japan has a wildly different culture that has no expectation to legal, personal or consumer privacy, or this company is going to be eviscerated for tracking its customers' behavioral habits (not just purchasing habits).
Then again, I wonder what the safeguards are. If people are opting in to receive this wireless info, no big deal - they chose to receive it. Tracking's a different story, but still, what web site owner doesn't track how much demand they get from an ad or a news story? If they're not opting in, hmmm - sounds spammish.
Last, I wonder if Tsutaya is tracking consumer response to their e-notifications en masse, like matching up web site visitors to their country of origin, or if they're doing microtracking - matching up responses to each individual, each indiv with their own corporate-database-tracked profile? One's OK, the other's nuts. Both are easily and totally possible.
Can't wait til Blockbuster or BestBuy starts doing this! Not...
I already recieve dumb blockbuster fliers because they know my address. Its always full of 39 films
I would never consider watching and 1 I do.
If they could study my habits and send me a flier
with 5 movies I was intrested in and their release dates...
Well it would probably still go right in the trash.
actually, what if you "borrowed" a friends (or foes) phone and then made a lot of VIctoria's secret orders and bought some NSYNC cd's?!
Could you then "RUIN" someone's demographic fit?
Thats actually real scary.
Imagine getting bombarded with goatse.cx pictures while trying to read about the latest linux distro?
Oh, wait, this is slashdot...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
What if I liked the idea of only having to see or sit through ads for things I would actually be interested in? I don't want to be tracked either, but is anyone aware of a company working on tracking where I submit what I want tracked (I don't give a damn if everybody know how many times I've seen Star Wars) and can keep the rest of my privacy? Would such submission be more hassle than it was worth, or would the advantages (to me) outweigh the effort?
That said, I also have no problem with word of mouth ads that are one-off. I'm interested when someone tells me something they like even I it's new to me. Otherwise, how would I be made aware of new things to try or look into (like how I found out about Slashdot)?
Corporations always think they can track what I buy and then use something like the "recommendation engine" they talk about in the article to tell me what else I would like. Sure that seems like a helpful service but it really is a very selfish service, because it does nothing to expose me to new and interesting stuff, it simply herds me along with what 9 out of 10 other people watched after they watched what I just watched. The whole purpose is to get the most of my money the fastest way possible.
OK, so you might say, "you dont have to use the recommendation service". But you see that is not the problem. The problem is that they will eventually produce a much less diverse range of films, music, etc and focus in only on what the majority wants to see. They are already doing that today, but it will get worse with systems like these. Soon your local Blockbuster will not bother stocking your favorite cult film, if they haven't already. My problem with this is that it really homogenizes the population into a bunch of boring drones who are told what to like and what to think.
I Heart Sorting Networks
We do similar things here, cable companies selling logs to the same people that administer the systems of grocery cards to know if someone was watching a commercial for a product bought by you.
I wonder what sort of psycological impact this has on a person.
Really, people talk about the internet polarization of ideologies, what is this doing to say someone that may have a passing interest in say quiltmaking they rent a video, the japaneese system shove quiltmaking products of all sorts down the customers throat at every juncture, and eventually through the aid of all including the ISP, Cable Companies, etc, all the person see is quiltmaking shit, do they , A) go insane B) Join the Rosie Grier(for you who dont know look it up its worth the laugh) needlepint society. c)Gain a hatred for quilts, buy ginsu knives and start chopping up quilts, which then leads to a proliferation of cutlery advertising targeted at this same customer, who in turn becomes a serial killer due to all the cutlery advertising now.
Leave your TV on some stupid ass channel when not at home, trade grocery cards(please make sure you cant cash a check with it) and lend you cell phone to your aged aunt selma who couldnt figure out how to use it if her life depended on it.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
how companies in Japan work...
...
Step one sell iMode phones.
Step two
Step three profit!
Just imagine...sites such as thinkgeek.com could garner useful statistics about their customers, statistics that answer such difficult questions as:
1. Are "geeks" the majority of people that order from thinkgeek?
2. Do most thinkgeek consumers own a computer?
3. Do some of the people that order the Perl shirts program in Perl, or do they mostly program in VB?
4. Are women truly the majority of their purchasing audience as first guessed?
5. Is the first thing noticed by most users on the site the first thing that comes up in the middle of the screen within one's line of sight?
6. Do people that buy mugs also drink Dr. Enuf? Water? Milk?
This kind of thinking is so exciting, I so wish I was in marketing.
...if they were using Linux to do this!
and everything to do with DoCoMo. They made i-Mode just for this stuff. That is why I cringe when people (if I remember Taco's quote correctly) describe the Japanese as "light-years ahead of us in cell phones."
I did some work on this stuff a while back, and the outline of their system is here.
The really fun part is that what I was involved with was making the information about how this worked clear to American executives at telcoms. I doubt we have long to wait till this great tech comes to a continent near us.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
...they don't have any pr0n.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Or just purchases? It all seems a little scary to me. Just think, if you buy a book in a store that is known to harbor anti-Japan literature, are you "marked" for special observation?
~ now you know
I'm willing to bet that those subscribed to wireless services have more disposable income, leading to increased purchases. Rather than attributing the success to personalized tracking it's likely that some large portion accounted for my income. From my quick perusal of the article they compared subscribers to non-subscribers suggesting that tracking has a financial payoff. It's not that simple!
Members were renting from Blockbuster?
It took Congress exactly one week to enact legislation banning people from obtaining "rental data" (including what one checked out of the library).
Just wait till they catch Ted Kennedy ordering boze online and we'll see how quickly the Privacy Laws in this country change.
This is exactly why I hope the US NEVER gets 3G! I want my phone to do one thing: make and receive phone calls. If I can hook a modem or such to it and transfer data, thats great ... but through another device! I don't want everything in my phone; not my PDA, not my web browser, just a phone.
*sigh*
Realistically, I know that we will be getting something (probably not true 3G by the time its all done, but something similar) and I will have to switch phones if I want one at all.
Damn.
My mother always used to tell me: If you can't find anything nice to say, say something bad about Windows.
I'm waiting for the day I can write an OpenGL screensaver that connects to the internet and creates a splendidly chaotic display of dots, each one representing one person in my town as they drive around and go about their business. It could even be interactive! Link their coordinates through a mapquest style system and float little tags over each of their heads on mouseover, displaying where they're shopping or what adult video store they're in.
Then, I would use this data to fuel an immensely complex encryption system, using the to's and fro's of my community as seed values, to encrypt all of the software I stole from CompUSA with my iPod.
If anyone thinks Microsoft is an unholy empire, what about DoCoMo? They're probably selling their data out to the Japanese Army by now. Huge dividends!
--"Dispelling Disillusion Since 2002"
--The Sensorium
--
The Bailiwick - DESIGNHUB2005
If you want to escape it, then you download your own moves, then you have to deal with federal reguations.. either way you loose.
thelikesofwhich.com
If this service could actually identify my preferences and let me know about things I care about, rather than just spam me with anything they can think of, I would love to see it.
How many of us rushed to see the Lord of the Rings or Phantom Menace trailers? Wouldn't it be great to be informed about such things as soon as they happen, as long as you don't get a ton of other crap?
I still think it would be better to have an intelligent agent that represents you finding these links for you rather than a marketing engine pushing the links to you, but, frankly, there's virtually no economic incentive for someone to build such an agent and every incentive for the marketers to send you their links. In fact, over time, I think marketers who actually do meet our needs will be the ones who win out, and untargeted spam will fall by the wayside.
There are already services that let you give each person with whom you correspond a different email address, thus letting you see who you can trust and eliminate those you can't. As these kind of services become ubiquitous, indiscriminate spammers will begin losing money, while smarter marketers, who actually (gasp!) tell us about products we care about will succeed.
Reading the article, it sounds to me (of course, it's marketing hype, and only time and experience will tell) like this might be such a service.
Wasn't there a slashdot article fairly recently about useful marketing versus spamming?
that is, iirc: Nome, Alaska. :-) Ought to look interesting when the marketramps do a geoplot of their data... (my mnemnotic for it is two 9mm pistols and a 7.62mm rifle, what I'd like to, er, "utilize" on the personal info pimps)
WHAT?!? A company where people can voluntarily sign up for membership is actually using that membership to track what they buy? And then turning around and using that information to target ads to those members? How innovative.
Although the article is more 'gee-whiz-ain't-it-great' than actually informative, it seems like Tsutaya is only tracking purchases at their stores and through their website, not somehow using people's phones to track everything they do and buy.
Does anyone actually believe there are ANY companies that have a club card that AREN'T doing this? It doesn't really sound like they are doing anything revolutionary.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lets not forget about Radioshack.
.. I'm with Kramer, it's a front for some kind of Mafia.
I always thought it was a joke, I never really shopped much at Radioshack before, but I remember watching Seinfeld and Kramer going on and on about them requesting his phone number to purchase some batteries.
It's no joke, I bought 3 dollar batteries from them, paid cash and they tried to get my Name, Phone Number, Address, and DOB.. I'm willing to bet money, maybe some Radioshack emloyees can back me up, that they have fields in their Database for Social Security # and Drivers License #.. I wonder what they're doing with all of that information they are stockpiling?
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I hate to say it, but as a result of the economic downturn I'm doing coding for a direct marketing company. As such I get to see, and often implement, all the nasty tracking stuff that follows so many users through their visits to different web sites.
On the bright side, a lot of what is tracked from our end tends to be geared towards interpretting responses from different advertising campaigns rather than pinning habits on particular users. Such information results in more effective advertising, and most likely brought about the dreaded "Wazzzzzzup?!" ads.
Tracking isn't always a bad thing, but it justifiably becomes a concern when the relative anonymity of those being tracked is lost.
And now, the problems with this, for those not following it close enough:
1) If I bought the n*sync album, and liked it, I'd already know a new one was coming out. Informing me it of this would embarrass you and creep me the hell out.
2) If I bought said album and didn't like it, your informing me that there is a new one would probably not entice me to buy it. Getting a free "clip," which would no doubt be identical to the songs played on mtv, the radio, and cars parked next to mine at Target, would not entice me to buy it. So again, it embarrasses you and creeps me the hell out.
3) If you let me know there's a new Nicole Kidman flick out, and tell me where I can see it, you assume that I had nothing to do that evening but what you tell me. Basically, you're suggesting that I do what you say and forcefully providing me with a suggestion. And since nobody goes to a film alone, I'd have to admit to my friends that we're going to see this damn butterfly movie because a cell-phone provider told me to. When they were done laughing, we wouldn't go. Again, you are embarrassed and I am shamed.
There is no way for this technology not to be obnoxious. It is not passive advertising, like a magazine or banner ad, which I act on if that's what I am searching for. It is active advertising, singling me out, and unlike telemarketing which has a (slightly) human factor to it increasing the probability of success. So we have obnoxious technology on expensive devices. Result? Devices become marginalized to only people who are themselves obnoxious, deleting the street appeal (one of the largest sellers of cell phones). Companies realise this and don't use the service. The service dies, and CIOs fire ad sellers like it's their fault.
Jesus, people, how hard is it to build a company through great customer service, useful products and quality goods? It seems that everybody's looking to force junk down our throats for loads and loads of money, claiming it's "free." Is it any wonder OSS has such trouble in this market?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
If I were to follow someone around and gain this detailed level of knowledge about their activities, I would be dragged into court for stalking. But if a corporation follows people around to find out what they are doing, it is called "targetted marketting" or "demographics information gathering" and it is just business. I don't want people or corporations following me around trying to gather information on me. If you actually want to know about me, ask me to my face and I will probably tell you. Otherwise, if you have to follow me around all day and look at my video rental history, list of books purchased lately, and recently purchased groceries, you are becoming a stalker.
Remember when the government followed people around to find out what they were up to? That was the Stasi.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
So where are the big films and the variation of 20+ years ago, where is the ground breaking Star Wars, the revolutionary 2001, the Hitchcocks, the acting of Bogart and Bacal.
Star Trek 4^100
Star Wars 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Yet another "Action adventure"
This is thanks to crap focus groups that also make sure every car looks the same. Mapping more customers can only help identify that 5% of people actually do like Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, but hate the Beach. Rather than asking a bunch of no marks with nothing better to do than fill in questionaires.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This is yet another point where your initial viewpoint influences the conclusion you arrive at.
:)
Instead of "this will drive products to centrist crap" you can have a different perspective on this. One thing this will allow, is to provide a "guaranteed audience" for just about any genre you care to name. And provide a way to get access ot that audience.
You like movies about obscure topic X. Most movie companies don't bother making such movies, because the marketting costs involved in informing you that the movie exists are too high for the small size of the market. If, instead, you can simply send an email out to everyone that likes these movies, your marketting costs just dropped like a rock. Your audience is suddenly aware of your movie, and, one can hope, if it doesn't suck too much people will actually see/rent/buy it. But no one will see/rent/buy it if they don't know about it.
This *can* make it more economical to target smaller audiences by decreasing the costs of communicating with that audience.
Will it acutally be done that way? Well, that's where your initial preconceptions come into play.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
you can find out about the trailers just by aiming your eyes at a relevant news site. Just like you do now .... if you're interested.
So what's the problem again?
I guess you haven't been to a US supermarket in the past year. All the major store chains require you to use a "discount card" (e.g. customer profile ID) in order to avoid paying an inflated price. Notice how many people voluntarily use those cards seemingly without a care in the world?
Perhaps you should reconsider your statement.
--
Spaz!
describe the Japanese as "light-years ahead of us in cell phones."
Let them be light years ahead of us in cell phones. I really don't want all of that crap.
SPEEDIAL. VIBRATE MODE. A RELIABLE WAY TO SHUT THEM UP IN THEATRES AND OTHER QUIET PLACES.
That is all I want. I don't want to watch Blade Runner on my cell phone. I don't want to ask Jeeves anything, GET IT? I don't want a map to the city that is so dang tiny that I can't read it. If I want to order Chinese food, then I will call them personally, not use a scroll down menu. I am not trading stocks on my phone.
These are the same bastards that want to put a TV tuner card or a DVD drive in my PC... and make my computer into the worlds most expensive, horrible looking and sounding home theatre system. STOP IT!
Oh, and another thing. Stop making ring that plays 'Stairway to Heaven,' Snoop Dogg's 'Gin and Juice,' or the national anthem of France.
Those songs are driving everyone in the office crazy when "Mr. Cell Phone Jerk" is away and we can't find the phone in time to turn it off. Then "Miss Cell Phone Boyfriend Obsessive" calls back three times because sweetie didn't answer. Who hasn't played that game?
This is why my fiancee has our cell phone. I hate the things... and make her keep it off in my presence. Besides, is anyone really got anything that important to talk about that justifies vehicular manslaughter?
DoCoMon!
Welcome to the real world you morons.
What do you think the idea behind digital cable is? Anything digital allows companies to track and analyze info about you, be it cell phone habits, tv viewing habits, web surfing habits, P2P habits, etc. Then companies can alter behavior patterns based on what services are offered and how they are offered. Its the nature of capitalism, combined with twisted morals and centralized corporate power. Get used to it, or don't participate. Corps don't care, because the masses will always participate; most of them don't know or don't care about the truth... which is what the powers-that-be want. Happy people = peace. The result of peace? The powers-that-be get to stay in power (or expand their power).
(sorry for the rant.. just trying to wake you up)
Try this - random grocery cards!
Some chains [Safeway] allow you to type in your "phone number" when you check-out, rather than requiring you to scan a card.
Sign up for a card so you have a "legit" number to use as a last resort if needed, then next time you check out try a random phone number, until you get one (or more) that work. The number I usually use apparantly belongs to a family with young chilrden, as the coupon machine sometimes spits out diaper coupons...
If enough people do this the database gets corrupt (or they require physical cards, which lowers the convenience/compliance and risks alienating customers, which they do not want to do).
Silly Rabbit, sigs are for kids.
I live in Japan and have been renting videos from Tsutaya for years.
In Japan, for a huge number of young people, the keitai (cell phone) is the primary phone - they don't have another one in their apartment.
So when you sign up at Tsutaya, they want your keitai number. Big deal. I'll bet Blockbuster has your phone number, too.
Over here, it used to be that your keitai number was also your email - 09012345678@docomo.ne.jp - most people have changed it to something a bit less spammable. (I don't know anyone who hasn't changed it.)
So, most likely, Tsutaya doesn't have any linked information, unless you've offered to link it for them via their website...
I just don't see how this relates exclusively to Japan or to advanced CRM or keitais: the same thing could have been done 100 years ago by your library using postcards.
Keitais are not so advanced here that they can tell when you are watching a movie or close to a store. Perhaps you get an occasional email on your phone. (I've never gotten one.) This is not particularly Big-Brother-ish.
Blockbuster already knows what movies you rent from them, what days you rent, how often you pick a foreign film, a soft-core, a sci-fi, new release, whatever. They also have your phone number and maybe your email, if you signed up for some promotion or "member's club" on their website.
This is completely a non-story.
Any website that ties browsing to any real-world activity can do this.
If blockbuster.com or bestbuy.com has a page where you can enter your personal info and you actually do, you can bet that you will be tracked in this way.
It's not really an invasion of privacy if you are opting in...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
And before slashdotters get all worked up about spamming, this campaign appears to be opt-in. I have had a Tsutaya card for a year and a half (yes, I live in Japan), but since I didn't give them my i-Mode address, I have never heard a word from them. Ever.
All Tsutaya is doing here is sending you targeted advertising--the only novelty is that the mail reader is a cell phone instead of a PC. What makes the cell phone approach more effective is that people generally take cell phones with them to the rental shops, whereas PC's tend to stay home.
I don't know how they associate purchases with cell phone addresses, but they did have campaigns in the past where you got discounts for presenting i-Mode based "online coupons" at the counter, so maybe that's how they do it. Rentals are easy, of course; you just associate (again, I have to emphasize, voluntarily provided) i-Mode addresses with rental membership cards.
Frankly, I would find these email ads to be annoying as heck, but some people apparently like it; as long as it's opt-in, I see no problem.
Good read, our future?
/ sp ew.html
http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/documents
Gee & Gosh, the Wonders of Behavior Tracking. Don't you envy those cool futuristic wireless Japanese cyberconsumers? I pray that some day somebody would Profile my Consumer Product Consumption Patterns so that I never again would feel unentertained.
All the time my wireless telephone would call me and on its little color television screen there would magically appear targeted 3D joy-consumer-grams keeping me Informed of Newly Released and Upcoming Derivative Entertainment Products scientifically cloned and distilled in the Hollywood labs from Stuff that Average Consumers within my Profiled Demographic Group had been Profiled to determine they would probably Like to purchase.
Because it's always Great to Consume Entertainment Content Exactly Like The Stuff You've Consumed Already. You fucking worthless foodtube.
Fuck that.
Not a single paragraph was spent in that article addressing privacy concerns, but it must be assumed that the matter-of-factly business rationalization of computerized obsessive stalking is that only troglodytes, communists and paranoid perverts with Something To Hide would worry about privacy anyway.
I hate the future. I hate you. Death is too good for marketeers.
About the use of this information by parties other than marketing departments.
Harvesting lifestyle information allows psychiatrists to accurately predict how you think.
Large applications written with the help of psychiatrists can accurately predict public reaction to information, allowing government support agencies (read: political marketing firms) to tailor speeches to exactly what will get the best response from the public.
We all know that political agenda is achieved not by simply saying "We are going to rape you of all your rights" but by gradually stripping each person of their rights by making it look like they are protecting your rights.    For instance "Another instance of <anti-agenda-item/> has caused incredible problems and suffering all because <relate any-unrelated-issue/> has not been dealt with yet.    But if only someone <implied hero-agenda-supporter-stuffing-our-pockets/> would do something <imply agenda-item/> to miraculously save us all and bring us peace.  Unfortunately someone <imply agenda-item-antagonist> stands in the way of <imply word-peace-and-harmony/> by keeping <imply something-deserved warning="do not mention it was taken away by gvmnt in first place"/>"
Well, enough of my <rant any-/.-rant>, back to <work person-stuffing-my-pockets at the present/>
P.S. Yes, I used word to write the html because I was in a hurry. It dumps crap into my html that I hate, but it's faster than typing all theose tags.My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so