The majority of American customers have an increasing daily online presence across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon Prime.
A monetizable data profile of a consumer’s needs and wants is being formed from their email addresses, phone numbers, shopping habits, birthdays, and more. In many cases, the consumer is unaware of or unaware of this, which is why companies and data brokers use this data profile.
Approximately 79% of Americans believe that they have limited control over what marketers can learn about them, according to a study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania. The concept of data fatigue is that consumers know their data is being collected but feel powerless to stop it.
Study results showed that more than half of respondents knew little about what a company could do with data. This model has now moved offline, to your nearest grocery store.
Retailers bought data from data brokers previously to gain a better understanding of consumer trends and valued the market at $319 billion in 2021, it is expected to surpass $545 billion by 2028.
By using options such as loyalty programs, location tracking, app usage, and even digital receipts, companies are eliminating the middleman.
R.J. Cross, director of the Public Interest Research Group’s Don’t Sell My Data campaign, stated that retailers are using all means at their disposal to obtain as much personal information about you as possible. This is because it presents a new area of income for them.
Mitul Jain, the founder and CEO of Refive, stated, “My face is part of the data that’s being captured, my behavior, and all of that gives off many more pieces of information about me, my age, my gender, and my ethnicity.” “And all of these bits of knowledge can then be merged once more with all of these other little nuggets that I’ve been forgetting throughout my shopping expedition.”
