The Future of Retail Is Big Brother-y as Hell

If the latest National Retail Federation trade show is any indication, retail will soon be driven almost entirely by technology, analytics, and artificial intelligence, as more and more retailers desperately try to both beat and imitate the Amazon-Alibaba Cerberus.

As reported by the New York Times, this week’s NRF show “was crowded with alert systems primed to recognize heavy-spending customers, so-called smart shelves fitted with real-time inventory trackers and robots for every step of the supply chain.”

But the main goal of much of the new technology is to gather data about the customer, a practice Alibaba is currently leading the way in.

Thanks to their “voracious data collection” — something the story said Chinese shoppers “largely accepted” without really qualifying what “largely” means — Alibaba is able to “create detailed behavioral profiles across its many platforms,” and use those profiles for targeted marketing.

“To promote movies like ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ to an Asian audience,” for instance, Alibaba used its vast trove of data to target “everybody who likes Dennis Quaid movies, who likes dogs, who has watched a dog video.”

Further sending things down a dystopian rabbit hole, Alibaba also now uses AI to handle 95 percent of customer service inquiries, as well as to “predict supply chain volatility and personalize marketing,” two things as alike as staplers and string cheese.

And, with help from the many products that were on display at NRF, more retailers will soon be able to follow suit, and “compile more detailed dossiers on their clientele, stuffed with data collected online and in stores” so they can “fine-tune their marketing and scheduling to each consumer.”

And you thought those banner ads that follow you around the internet were bad.

You can read more about it at the New York Times.

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