Grocery Store "Smart Shelves" Will Identify Customers, Show Targeted Ads

cagraham writes "Snack company Mondelez International (maker of Oreos, Trident, Cadbury eggs) will introduce so-called 'smart shelves' into store checkout aisles beginning 2015. The shelves will use Microsoft's Kinect software, in addition to other tech, to identify shoppers age and sex, and will then use that info to deliver demographically tailored advertisements. The shelves will be able to track engagement, monitor how long customer's watch each ad, and offer discounts if a customer is considering a purchase (weight sensors will tell the machine if you pick up a product). Mondelez says the software will only use and collect aggregate data, and will not record any video or photos."

Comments

Re:OT: I'd love to see grocer cards banned

[Anonymous Coward]

I always use Jenny's Number at chain stores.

the product must be consumed.

[nimbius]

this is consumer capitalism at its finest. No longer do we care about making a particularly good or useful product anymore. the focus is determining who is looking at the product, and custom tailoring a set of deceptive or manipulative advertising based on gender and age. Its desparation.

Ive worked at a grocery store, so i can tell you this kind of crap is pervasive.. ultimately most people are so sick and tired of consumer capitalisms model of tricking us into buying garbage, that its all they can do to enter $Grocery_store and purchase the goods they need with a minimum of hassle. Grocery chains use different kinds of music and even sizes of floor tiles throughout the building to control shoppers walking speeds, they run vanilla airfresheners in the bakery department to ensure you always think something fresh is cooking, and they only fire up the 40 bird rotisserie during dinner hours. yearly, or more frequently, they also decide to completely revamp the store and put all the goods in different locations. if you make it past this insanity and find the toilet paper you originally wanted, you'll have to fight a kind of mathematic jigsaw puzzle more sinister than reaganomics that largely just ends up making you buy what grocers want you to. the asinine barking video adverts on some shelves already exist. theyre triggered by motion and they drive shoppers, in my observation, into a bath-salts rage most of the time. whats worse is all this stuff in a grocery store comes together as a 'perfect storm' during food-based holidays. the music, the smells, the colors, and everything designed to get normal shoppers to spend a few bucks more, sends people into sectarian violence during thanksgiving. I've seen customers literally beat eachother in the aisles for the last tin of pumpkin pie filling without so much as considering the 3 pallets of generic brand we keep in the far hinterlands near the milk. targeting things to customers wont work as well as you think.

Stockers. stockers drive huge wooden pallets of cereal and such up and down aisles for restock. most of the boxes have smiling faces on them, so expect 200 or so encounters from the same middle aged man who never touches the product as he rolls down aisle 6 to be broken up, and placed on a shelf. these pallets are pretty big too, so dont expect third shift stockers to care that much if your camera gets nailed by 2000lbs of slow-moving watermelon on its way to produce. these guys routinely rip off coupon dispensers and colored banners hanging out of the aisles, and whatever ends up on the floor after 3rd shift usually gets thrown in the trash by first 1st shift clean crews.

those loyalty cards. dont think for a minute your information isnt getting added from the advert to the card, or isnt somehow related, because it absolutely is. The card seriously knows more about who you are as a person than your closest loved ones, and is used to routinely provide a pavlovian treat to bad customers in order to get them to become good ones. the popularity of an item drives inversely its sale price, so expect the AI from the advert system to factor into this as well as restock levels and future pricing.

Re:Could be good.

[icebike]

That works for small purchases, but the delays requesting clerk resets just because you re-positioned
a can of beans in the bagging area isn't worth the time saving for big buys.

Pick the middle aged lady as your checkout line, and ignore any minor difference in line length.

Smart shoppers learn that the semi cute checkers are new hires. The haggered looking
middle aged women are long time employees and know every price/number in the book and never
have to look up anything when the bar code sticker falls off the Mellon.

If she calls everyone in line "Hun", chances are you are in the right line.