8 ms·

In Japan at least, before automated facial recognition, cashiers recorded buyer demographics by hand. I would think other places do it too. Edit: Here is what

• logicallee 9y ago
  Could you be more specific? What could they possibly [Edit:] have recorded in a second other than male/female, Japanese/foreigner, or child/adult? Facial recognition is a unique identifier but cashiers have access to almost nothing they can record... [Edit] What was it? Edit: clarified that I am asking about the history here, what information was manually collected by cashiers as parent stated
  • anabis 9y ago
    Demographics and sales data is a primary example of big data. The tweeted advertisement system also looks like it's only recording demographics. Not individual personal IDs.
    • logicallee 9y ago
      Sorry, I wanted you to expand on this: "cashiers recorded buyer demographics by hand". Give me an example of what they used to record by hand. All I can think of is "male, adult". I am specifically interested in what else you say they used to record. I wasn't asking about the present status quo, only your historical statement about cashiers recording by hand.
      • anabis 9y ago
        Oh, OK. I edited in a link to the buttons the cashiers used, in the original post.
        • logicallee 9y ago
          Thank you! Obviously that is far less privacy violating than demographics could be. Today advertisers that phone home (spyware) often lie and claim only aggregate data is produced - but this manual example really is the kind of data that is okay. It's far less detailed than something like facial recognition. Thanks for adding the link!
  • derefr 9y ago
    You could distinguish people who are married or are parents (with false negatives) by recording people who are at the till with their spouse or children. (Send out demographic-research cards once, to a few of the same stores you've collected this info from, to derive a normalization factor that will make such collected observations useful from then on.) You could make a note of a person's seeming affect—positive/negative/neutral emotion.
    • logicallee 9y ago
      I'm asking historically what was actually done, not what could be done. (For, "what could be done" you could ask if the cashier had seen this person before? Are they a regular shopper here, as far as the cashier notices?) I am asking what information cashiers in Japan actually in fact recorded by hand. What did these cards look like for each customer. Etc.
      • wapz 9y ago
        Generally what has been "accepted" as done is age and male/female. I'm sure some places have done more but that's all I've heard of (lived in Japan for about 6 years now).
      • anabis 9y ago
        Image of actual buttons used added to the original post. Keep in mind this has to be done while doing usual cashier things, so not much attention can be taken up by it.
        • logicallee 9y ago
          Thanks!
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• cyberferret 9y ago
  In a few stores here in Australia, I am asked for my post code (or country of residence if no post code) by the cashier when ringing up a sale. Predominantly at tourist/tour related points of sale, but I've also had it an electronics and white goods stores. No idea if the operator is also recording gender and perceived age group etc., but I do know that on most occasions, you can opt not to answer the post code question.
  • punk_coder 9y ago
    I'm not sure if it's true, but a friend once told me the reason a store asked for your zip code was to see if they had a large audience coming from a certain area. This let them know other locations to possibly open other stores.
    • Spooky23 9y ago
      The GM of the big box that I worked at 25 years ago said that the zip code thing was to measure the "destinationness" of the store. In our case, the average big ticket buyer travelled an average of 30 miles, which was awesome in that it made the end caps more valuable.
    • aaron695 9y ago
      I've heard (unsure if true) it was to reduce entropy. IE they keep the last 4 digits of your credit card, combined with a post code you have a unique id.
      • heywire 9y ago
        Not necessary, most point of sale systems can provide a unique hashed or tokenized version of the account number for analytics and identification purposes.
    • alsetmusic 9y ago
      As far back as 2000, my partner was asked for her zip code as we made a purchase and I curtly replied "no comment," to the surprise of everyone there. She walked for her phone number, which really irritated me because this was a $5 retail purchase of some type), and I got more curt when I said, "You don't need that!" I've been annoyed by this stuff long before most people were ready to consider privacy concerns anything more than paranoia.
• preinheimer 9y ago
  I've seen this in Canada, at a Dairy Queen. The cash register had a matrix of buttons M: [0-9][10-19][20-29][30-54][55+] F: [0-9][10-19][20-29][30-54][55+] They'd just push a button as they punched in your order.
  • caf 9y ago
    Presumably most cashiers would just optimise to pressing the same button on every transaction, since doing it "right" makes no difference observable to them.
    • adventured 9y ago
      Unlikely to be common behavior. The tally would come back at the end of a shift or day and the person doing that would be reprimanded, then fired if it continued. It would be enforced by the manager/s. Now, would they press a random demographic button after that (instead of the same button every time)? Maybe, however there are numerous other ways to increase compliance in that case as well. If the logs kept coming back sketchy, well the cashiers are on tape - bam, another firing (note from the video tape: cashier intentionally hits male button when it's obviously a female, then repeats the behavior multiple times). Eventually the example gets across to the other workers to at least make an effort.
      • jes5199 9y ago
        You're giving the organizations too much credit. A roommate of mine worked at a fast food restaurant in the early 2000s, where they were measuring the speed that workers took orders by timing the transactions on the cash register. The store manager had the brilliant idea to game it by running all cash transactions on pen&paper - not using the register at all! not even the cash drawers! - and then keying in the orders as fast as possible after the fact. The store won an award, the manager got a big bonus.
        • NTripleOne 9y ago
          Hah, that's brilliant.
• partiallypro 9y ago
  Don't forget loyalty cards are both a way to track demo and purchasing trends.
• erroneousfunk 9y ago
  I volunteer at the Boston Museum of Science on Sundays and we also track how many people we interact with at the various activities. We log by group, so log might read "1 man, 1 woman, 2 boys, 1 girl (family)" or "3 women, 10 girls, 12 boys (school group)" It's really handy to see how many people the activities attract, and who they appeal to most. You're tracked everywhere!