Hello, Mr. Yakimoto

Do you remember that mall scene from the movie “Minority Report”? As Tom Cruise enters a Gap store in the year 2054, a beam scans his retina and a digital voice asks, “Hello, Mr. Yakimoto, how have those assorted tank tops worked out for you?”

The implication was that the future of retail would be a digital treasure trove of consumers’ personal habits. What a huge boost that could be for marketing, merchandising, inventorying, store planning and visual merchandising.

The fact is, though, the future was already beginning to happen. It was in the loyalty card programs so many big retailers – especially supermarkets – were introducing. The hidden benefit of those programs was not going to be so much “loyalty” as “information.” Every time a loyalty cardholder swiped her keychain tag, the retailer gobbled up valuable information about her: what she bought, how often she shopped, where she shopped, how much she spent, the brands she chose, the coupons she redeemed.

It’s not clear to me if retailers have ever done much with that information. Until now, maybe. According to an article in The New York Times, Sam’s Club is offering a program called eValues that will compile each member’s buying history and offer specific bargains tailored to that history. As the member enters the store, she swipes her card at an eValues kiosk near the entrance and receives several pages worth of special deals.

The idea, I suppose, is not only that the program knows she buys Tide detergent or Cap’n Crunch cereal. It also knows how much she buys and how often, so that it can anticipate her next shopping trip. It’s called “predictive analytics” – not unlike what Netflix uses to suggest movies you might like to rent next or that eHarmony uses to facilitate love matches.

True, the supermarkets print out a bunch of coupons when their loyalty club members check out, based evidently not only on what you bought that shopping trip but on what you’d bought historically. But that’s for the next time you shop. So it still requires hoarding coupons and remembering where you’ve put them. One value of the Sam’s program is that the shopper doesn’t have to clip or present anything. The savings are registered automatically at checkout.

Consumer watchdog groups have long worried about the increasing encroachment on individuals’ privacy and the huge potential for mischief. If that’s the case, mischief-makers have been more creative at using this technology than the retailers themselves, who seem to have done practically nothing with it. Maybe the Sam’s program is a first assertive initiative.