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Japanese Video Chain Cashes in on Mobile Internet

Posted by timothy on from the what-you-watch-when dept.

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.'"

6 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. At what point... by banky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    1. Re:At what point... by foobar104 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      Think of it like evolution. Once you get so old that you can no longer reproduce, natural selection doesn't care about you. You're outside the system. The same forces act on you, but your success or failure has no effect whatsoever on your species.

      Same thing with advertising. If you don't participate in the see-buy cycle, then you're outside the system. You still get advertised to, but your choices have no effect whatsoever on your market segment.

      In other words, as long as there are enough people out there who respond positively or neutrally to this type of thing, then there's a good reason to keep doing it.

      Another analogy. People hand out flyers on street corners because, although 90% of the people may ignore the flyers, 10% of the people may respond to them.

      On the other hand, if that 90% of the people, instead of ignoring the flyers, punched the flyer-hander-outer in the nose and burned down the flyer-hander-outer's store, you'd see a sharp decline in flyer-hand-outism.

  2. Like Doubleclick by shawnmelliott · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

  3. Not In the US? by zentec · · Score: 1, Insightful


    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.

  4. Not as nefarious as it seems at first glance by spun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  5. Up in arms? Hardly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.
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    Spaz!