Physical appearance... what else? That's hardly a wealth of information, and if the store owner is too obvious about documenting the physical appearance of cust

Physical appearance... what else? That's hardly a wealth of information, and if the store owner is too obvious about documenting the physical appearance of customers who are just walking around they could get into some trouble. Security cameras are an accepted necessity, for security, but not most people wouldn't accept them for marketing purposes. This brings to mind the ads in Minority Report, that scan your eyeballs to identify you and show you a personalized ad. That's technically possible today, but I doubt you'll see it anytime soon. In a real-world business, you don't get actual information from a visitor until that person buys something and becomes a customer. At that point you'll often get a credit card which gives you a name and relatively unique id, and you'll have the opportunity to interact with the customer and ask questions like "Did you find everything you were looking for?", "What brought you in today?", and "Is there anything else I can help you with?". Depending on the type of store, you can have salespeople wander around and ask visitors those questions too, but they can't be pushy about it without violating the person's privacy and guaranteeing that the visitor won't become a customer.