Consumers are mapped via cell phones – Swedish Dagbladet

Consumers are mapped via cell phones – Swedish Dagbladet

that go with the cell phone turned on in your pocket or purse, unknowingly sends out signals intercepted by the store wifinät. The signals reveal exactly how the consumer moves in store. This is regardless of whether the customer logged on the store’s wifi or not.

Through this reconnaissance can store chains learn how customers move and above the shelves of their stay. Information used to decorate and place the goods so that sales are increasing. In Sweden the food chain Ica tested the technology internally, but using it is not yet in stores.

– to record how people move, both outdoors and indoors, is common in Sweden and other EU countries. What is important to remember is that one does not mapped as an individual but as a mobile phone, said Malin Sundström, trade researcher at the Swedish Institute for Innovative Retailing, University of Borås.

In Västerås going on right now an attempt by via mätdosor control how people move in the city. Boras begins corresponding trial in the fall and then also includes a shopping center in the measurement. The goal is not just to maximize the trade, but also to use the pattern in urban planning.

In an opinion piece in the newspaper VLT requires Pirate Party that measurements in Västerås should be discontinued. The party calling the mass surveillance and abusive towards people’s right to move freely in public places without being registered.

Bjorn Bergman, president of the association Swedish city centers, however, thinks that the measurements are unproblematic as long as they are anonymous.

– It is about understanding how consumers are acting to make town centers better, says Björn Bergman.

At the same time, it is now technically possible to the same moment that the customer sends a text message, open a email or access Facebook via a mobile phone, find out information such as the customer’s gender, place of residence and age. Anyone who wants to be absolutely sure not to enter into any reconnaissance must simply turn off the cell phone altogether.

Data Inspection Board has not yet examined whether market research via mobile phones is contrary to the Data Protection Act.