Consumer Obfuscation

Obfuscation is the process by which consumers find it normal to provide businesses with private information. This process refers to the ways in which that retailers trick consumers into believing how they are being tracked. However, what they don’t know is there are so many other activities that are tracking, parsing and even categorizing them.
Consumers normalize sharing private information because they become comfortable being watched through their phones. In other words, as people have become more emotionally and physically close to their phones, the more relevant and targeted personalized messages are. As a result, we do not see these surveillance measures because the phone has become so integrated into our lives. Moreover, consumers are …show more content…
Essentially, the author is saying that with the large databases of personal information at the disposal of retail companies, they will start personalizing their marketing of goods and services based on consumer scores. Retailers will rate consumers based on behaviors and lifestyles. Therefore, big data starts to function like peddling, where retailers start to discriminate against consumers from disadvantaged positons and don’t show them certain goods or charge them more. In other words, big data will lead to discrimination in the retail strategies of retailers who will compare consumers with data from thousands of other people and come up with an estimate of what you will buy and at what price. Big data connects inequality because information that they collect such as the foods you eat and over the counter prescription drug activity will be used to determine if companies will market to you or not. The retail business discriminates against families that come from disasvanaged racial and social positions by charging them more for certain goods or not showing them certain goods. Therefore, these people are less valuable to retailers and the …show more content…
An infrastructure gets created whereby the person, phone and store become the emphasis of consumer surveillance. The lines between the digital and physical world gets blurred, and consumers accept tradeoffs such as giving up data and privacy to get the kinds of things they want. Laws are useless because the retail business gets people to accept giving up their data through relevance, tradeoffs and loyalty programs. Thus, the divide between the digital and physical world becomes blurred as consumers become more permissive to tracking. Laws and regulations cannot contain the access to personal data because we have become normalized through institutionalization to give up our privacy to access personalized items, discounts and coupons. This becomes the hidden curriculum of the retail business and pervades all other aspects of our lives while at work, home or in