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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.'"
(Yes, I know, you don't have to do business with a company that does this sort of thing. But that presumes that (a) you know that the company is spying on you, and (b) that there exist reasonable alternatives)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Actually I think that it is illegal for Video Rental companies to sell information about you rental habits. At least in the US.
See: Here
--xPhase
The following sentence is TRUE. The previous sentence is FALSE.
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.
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.
Japan actually has much stronger laws than the US regarding what kinds of information companies can collect, and what they can do with that information. "Privacy" is quite important to most modern Japanese, and the fact that it is difficult to obtain just makes it more precious.
There is already a huge problem with keitai (cell phone) spam on i-mode and other services in Japan. My girlfriend recently had to change her number due to 50+ spam calls a day. These kinds of problems have made Japanese consumers very aware of the dangers of leaving personal information unguarded.
Tsutaya is not doing anything that hundreds of US companies aren't slavering to do. And you can bet that once wireless penetration in the US reaches the levels of Japan, Americans will be tracked in far more insidious ways than this. In fact, I would say that Americans, rather than Japanese, are the ones who would happily "annihilate themselves" for convenience, as their use of credit cards (which most Japanese mistrust) for even the smallest transactions shows.