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How Target's Mobile App Uses Location Tech To Track You
An anonymous reader writes Big-box retailers are figuring out how to use mobile apps to drive in-store sales, but they're also concerned about privacy. To see how they're doing, Xconomy took Target's app for a spin on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The app uses indoor location-mapping technology from a startup called Point Inside. The verdict? The app saved a few minutes in locating items around the store, but it would work better if it knew where shoppers (and the items on their lists) are at any time. With Apple's iBeacons set to roll out more widely, retail privacy will be a hot issue in 2015.
Obviously you haven't shopped at best buy or toys r us lately. They kill Amazon on price and selection
So Best Buys Book section is better than Amazons? And their Jewelry? Cutlery? Clothing?
Oh wait, they don't have any of that stuff... I'd better go check Toys R Us... lol
And on price? Yes, I have been to Best Buy lately... I went to get a network cable to replace a broken one. It was $29.99 for a single cable. They had much cheaper ones on their website but they're not available locally. And the cables they had at the store weren't listed on the website.
So I suspect you're comparing their websites... ok... but that's basically the same service. The store has entirely different products and different prices and it's worthless.
There's no reason to shop at a retailer unless you're desperate and need something now
Sometimes it's actually nice to fondle the merchandise. There's only so much you can get out of an online catalog, especially since the pictures are usually pretty poor.
I was beginning to believe the Radio Shack mantra, until I wandered into my neighborhood store the other day. They had an impressive array of sensors and kits for stand-alone, Rasberry Pi, Basic Stamp and Arduino, as well as the aforementioned systems themselves. Also the LittleBits stuff, including the Korg synth.
Plus essential cables, connectors and adapters, various useful batteries for UPS's, alarm systems and Roomba.
Oh yeah. And cell phones. And a handful of TVs.
And a whole rack full of soldering irons. And the parts cases.
So they're not quite as useless as they've been made out to be.
As for price, I'm not so impoverished that getting the Low Price Always is the overriding criteria for my purchasing decisions.
> Yet the article and the conclusion is that this app doesn't track you because of hyper sensitivity to privacy,
The problem here is that it is unknowable. Even if they promise not to track people they will always qualify that promise in two ways:
(1) They reserve the right to unilaterally change their mind at any point in the future as long as they publish some fine-print somewhere in a corner of their website
(2) They still track people, but they claim to anonymize the data. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that there is no such thing as anonymized tracking. At the very best it is just tracking that hasn't be de-anonymized yet.
It is like all those web trackers that let you "opt out" when in fact you can't opt out of being tracked, you can only opt out of having them rub your face in the fact that they are tracking you.