Keep Calm: Target Knows More About You Than You Think (Thanks to Data Mining)

The article, “How Target Figured Out a Teen Girl was Pregnant Before her Father Did,” talks about how retail companies like Target, study their customer’s shopping patterns so that they can send them personalized coupons based on their interests.

After analyzing data on its female consumers, Target Statistician Andrew Pole was able to identify which women were possibly pregnant based on how much scent-free lotion, soap, and vitamins the woman was buying. So what did Target do once they found out one of their female customers was most likely carrying a “bun in their oven?” They sent out coupons on diapers, maternity clothes, and strollers of course.

Imagine trying to keep your pregnancy a secret from your husband or boyfriend because you are waiting for the “right time” to tell him. Before you can get your speech together, in comes the bright and bold “Congrats, You’re Pregnant!” coupon booklet in the mail. Umm can you say…awkward??

In a way, Universalism supports Target’s data mining approach because collecting data from customers has become a sort of culture within the retail industry. Target isn’t the only store that collects data. More and more corporations are finding creative ways to incorporate collecting customer’s spending habits and inputting it into their databases. 

When one shops at a store and choose to use a debit/credit card at the register, they are basically giving that company automatic consent to organize your personal information into their data management system.

I don’t think this kind of data mining causes ethical concern because what the stores end up using customer’s information for is something positive. They want to provide their customers with related products that they might be interested in. They want to provide loyal customers with useful coupons and ways to stay connected to the store’s sale events. Customers never want to miss a good sale, right?

While I believe that data mining is harmless, I do believe that targeted marketing can be ethically tricky for different reasons. For example, a customer may feel like a company is imposing on their privacy. Like the target marketing geared towards pregnant woman, yes a woman might appreciate the fact that she can buy diapers at 40 percent off, but she might also feel violated at the same time. 

After all, pregnancy is a sensitive subject. Paranoid thoughts might creep in and she could start to wonder, “Just how much information does this store actually have on me and why?”

Looking through the lens of Aristotle, Target can use the Golden Mean to defend their target marketing practices. Target as the actor chose to collect consumer data and make conclusions from it so that they can help customers save money on products that they will actually use, thus making the customer happy.

Sometimes sending coupons can backfire big time and piss off a customer instead of making them happy. For example, in the Target article, a father becomes outraged and demands to talk to a manager after finding coupons on baby clothes and cribs in the mail that is intended for his teenage daughter. I think the manager fulfilled his ethical obligation perfectly because according to Ross’s Pluralistic Values, he utilized one of the duties – reparation. Even though it wasn’t that manager’s direct fault, he still tried to correct the harmful act by not just apologizing once, but twice.

I don’t think Target’s decision to ad mix their coupon books to avoid “creeping people out” is unethical because they wanted to eliminate the embarrassing feeling that women were experiencing when they opened their coupons and saw nothing but baby items. Like Mill’s Valuation Hedonism says, creating a sense of pleasure is more ethical than creating a sense of pain. At least the coupon book being centered on different items will put the woman more at ease.

These practices fit within the Principles and Practices forAdvertising Ethics because Principle 1 is about serving the public with a common objective truth. Target collects data from their customers to find out what their customers buying interests are so that they can better serve them. Target’s practices fits with every principle except for one.

Principle 6 says “Advertisers should never compromise consumers’ personal privacy in marketing communications, and their choices as to whether to participate in providing their information should be transparent and easily made.” Judging from a women’s reaction on either being “creeped out” or totally surprised on Target knowing about her pregnancy and even what trimester she was in proves that their marketing practice was not transparent enough or quite frankly--transparent at all.