A man from west Texas drives into a convenience store in southern California for gas. He starts to fill his tank, intending only to fill and go, when the station's computer changes his mind for him. He is unaware that he is the focus of a highly sophisticated marketing technique that I have dubbed 'assassin marketing(TM)'.
The layout of the lot channeled his car so that it had to face the store head-on as he drove into the lot. The store's computer system, through the video camera hidden on the roof of the store, examined the car and its driver, and another camera near the entry picked off the license-plate number. The store computer next compared the collected data and identified the man as a regular customer at one of its outlets in west Texas.
It also retrieved his buying history, As a result, as he was pumping gas, the LCD point-of-sale ad at the pump changed from the generic offer it had displayed for the first-time customer who preceded him. Instead, it offered him a large bag of Lay's potato chips (barbecue flavor) and a bottle of Snapple lemon iced tea for $1.49 with gas fill-up. It offered this because his buying history indicated that these were his two favourite snacks. Since he was in the process of filling up his car (as his buying history indicated), this seemed like a good deal to him.
Accordingly, rather than just pay for gas at the pump and leaving, he walked through the double doors, and entered the convenience store inside to pick up the chips, iced tea, and pay for the gas all at once. As he took his acquisitions to the checkout counter, the display in front of the clerk changed, so that as the clerk took the customer's credit card, the clerk said, 'You know, today's the big draw in the California lottery. First prize is $15 million - tax free - and if you buy three tickets, the fourth one's on us.'
Every word the clerk had uttered was scripted by the store's computer to appeal to the personality and past buying habits of the customer - who decided to buy the lottery tickets as well. Accordingly, instead of buying gas and being quickly on his way, he came into the store, and spent money he had no intention of spending, on things he would the store system knew he would enjoy. The customer was now on the verge of leaving when his departure was interrupted.
Just before the customer was about to check out, another car pulled into the lot. The store's computer once again checked the car, the license plate, and the driver. This time, however, the computer determined that the car had been stolen. When the driver got out of the car to come into the convenience store, the computer's video camera on the roof got a clear shot of him, checked against police-published records, and determined that he was a felon wanted for armed robbery. The computer then did several things simultaneously. First, it locked the inner door of the convenience store to protect the clerk and the customer inside. Then it contacted the police with the license plate number, and a photograph and video of the felon. Finally, when he went through the first set of the double doors, the outer door locked behind him, trapping him in a bulletproof cage of glass until the police arrived to arrest him and take him away. If necessary, it could also have gassed him into submission if he committed an act of violence, such as firing his gun.
The key technologies in this vignette are almost all available today. Photographing of car license plates is being done on North America's first electronic toll road, route 407 north of Toronto. Recognizing faces by the shape and features of the face is the emerging field of biometrics. Collecting information on customer purchases and then using it to up-sell the customer is being done right now by Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom, although not in the manner I've projected in this story. I don't know of a point-of-sale display that can change in response to the approach of individual customers, but there is nothing particularly difficult or novel in this technology.
Perhaps the most far-fetched aspect of this story is the interface with the police. Governments generally move more slowly than corporations, and it may take some time for law-enforcement agencies to be willing to work hand-in-glove with computer sentinels in the manner depicted here. The collection and use of personal information for corporate purposes has just barely begun, and we do not yet understand all of the implications. It is safe to say, though, that they will be numerous, far-reaching, and have a dramatic change on our lives. Whether we will like them or not, that's another story.
© Copyright, IF Research, December 1999.
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