Fascinating article in NYT magazine on how companies use consumers' data to change and shape their shopping habits.
"As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy."
Unfortunately, author makes it sound a bit too creepy and invasive. But yep, that's what we do.
