“How Companies Learn Your Secrets” by Charles Duhigg
One. Why is Target keenly interested in knowing which of their customers are pregnant?
Baby time is when consumers are in a state of flux; they’re open to making significant consumer habit changes. We read that, “old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux.” As a result, “shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs.” When you're vulnerable, you're an open target. Retailers want you now more than ever.
Target accesses public records to find out who’s had babies, and then Target inundates these customers with ads and coupons.
To some, Target’s customer research seems invasive, like the work of private detectives or government surveillance.
In fact, we read that Target, like other retailers, collects vast amounts of data on its customers who have no clue that their personal information is being disclosed, mined, analyzed, and sold to the highest bidders who aren't afraid to dig into their pockets for "customer acquisition."
Most Target customers don’t know that Target “assigns each shopper a unique code—known internally as the Guest ID number—that keeps tabs on everything they buy.”
Linked to this Guest ID “is your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit.”
Additionally, we read that, “Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal, or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, and the number of cars you own.”
All of this data is further analyzed by a team of statisticians such as Andrew Pole who is discussed in the essay.
This particular job is called predictive analytics, which is “devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them.”
I did an Internet search and found that predictive analytics has an average salary of 112K. You have to get a Masters of Science in Predictive Analytics. If you want to make even more money, closer to 175K, you study risk assessment, which is related to actuarial mathematics.
All of this is part of “the golden age of market research,” and we read that Target is at the forefront.
Data collecting has become a growing field over the last 20 years. Former chief scientist at Amazon, Andreas Weigend, says, “It’s like an arms race to hire statisticians nowadays.”
Retailers cannot get enough of your personal information, and with you moving all over the Internet, you have never been so transparent.
Two. Why are retailers so hell-bent on collecting our data?
“One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day.” This suggests that we are more driven by emotion than reason almost half the time.
MIT researchers doing lab experiments with rats discovered that brain activity decreases with habit and increases when we are behaving outside of habit, which is using our critical thinking skills.
We are hard-wired to act on habits because habits reduce thinking and reduced thinking conserves energy. We are not lazy; we are simply hard-wired to conserve energy for survival reasons. Therefore, we are inclined toward habitual behavior.
The term for when the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routing is called “chunking.”
We are inclined to “chunking,” because limited brain strain conserves energy and we are hard-wired for energy conservation.
Or perhaps that’s a fancy way of saying we’re lazy?
Clearly, the more we behave out of habit, the more vulnerable we are to marketing and the more predictable we are in our behavior. Retailers can better control consumers who behave out of habit.
Three. What is the 3-Part Process of Chunking?
“First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” Over time, this loop becomes more and more automatic.
In other words, MIT “discovered” what we’ve known all along: We’re creatures of habit.
We read, “Habits aren’t destiny—they can be ignored, changed, or replaced. But it’s also true that once the loop is established and a habit emerges, your brain stops fully participating in decision-making. So unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new cues and rewards—the old pattern will unfold automatically.”
Four. How do exercise and Febreze habits emerge?
A study of 256 health-insurance members took classes “stressing the importance of exercise. Half the participants received an extra session on the theories of habit formation (the structure of the habit loop) and were asked to identify cues and rewards that might help them develop exercise routines.” Those who identified cues and rewards “spent twice as much time exercising as their peers.”
A simple cue for morning jobs is to put on your running shoes before breakfast or leave your running shoes next to your bed. Clear rewards consisted of midday treats or the pride resulting from logbook recordings. I find the midday treat questionable since the calories of that treat might be equal or more than the calories burned from the jog.
On a related issue the author Duhigg gained 8 pounds from snacking on chocolate chip cookies at work. He realized the cue was to socialize, so he started buying apples to snack on for his “social break” and he was able to break the loop.
With Febreze, sales didn’t go up until marketers made it part of the brain loop with trigger, routine, and reward. And to do this, they had to add a stronger perfume smell to their product.
Five. Why is it difficult to change consumers’ buying habits?
In addition to the strengths of old habits, it turns out that people’s “most mundane purchases, such as toiletries and cleaning products, are done with no decision making whatsoever. This means a new product promising greater performance may not change a consumer.
The real trick is in timing. Catch a consumer during major upheaval: graduating, getting a new house, having a baby, going through a divorce, and that consumer is vulnerable to consumer change.
Target workers like Pole find out who’s pregnant and send that woman, or high school student as we see in one case, a barrage of coupons for baby clothes and cribs. In fact, one father discovered his high school daughter was pregnant because of Target coupons sent to his home.
Target won’t talk about Pole or other employees who do his kind of work. But we do know that since Pole was hired, Target’s revenues have grown from 44 billion to 67 billion (2002-2010).
“The Attention-Span Myth” by Virginia Heffernan”
One. What is Heffernan questioning about our collective attention span?
She questions that there is a universal attention span. She claims some people have long attention spans and that others have short ones. We’re unfairly demonizing the Internet for shortening our attention spans.
She writes that Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and “Is Google Making Us Stupid” that he is exaggerating his claim about the Internet’s effect on our brains, which practically causes “brain damage.”
Two points: Is she twisting Carr’s argument by using the term “brain damage” and is she addressing the scientific brain studies Carr cites for brail altering due to Internet us?
Another criticism: Heffernan uses a child who prefers drums to reading the novel The Sun Also Rises. But is that example a specific refutation of the biological and scientific evidence that shows the brain has changed due to Internet use?
Heffernan is then arguing that we place too much admiration and emphasis on a long attention span. Why is it “humankind’s best moral and aesthetic asset”?
No one said it was, but what some are saying is that a compromised attention span is not good for learning and intelligence. Twice in two pages Heffernan has used the Straw Man logical fallacy, creating a false argument to counter-argue.
Essay Option
Is Virginia Heffernan's attention-span myth a confirmation or challenge of Duhigg's thesis about the power of habit?
Sample Thesis
Heffernan's essay poses a weak challenge to Duhigg's because Heffernan fails to _____________, ____________, _______________, and __________________.
Purdue Owl Dangling Modifier Link
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
Comments