{"id":4346,"date":"2012-02-16T21:06:36","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T03:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4346"},"modified":"2012-02-16T21:06:36","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T03:06:36","slug":"how-companies-learn-your-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4346","title":{"rendered":"How Companies Learn Your Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nyti.ms\/AyNgCY\">Charles Duhigg<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: \u201cIf we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn\u2019t want us to know, can you do that? \u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pole has a master\u2019s degree in statistics and another in economics, and has been obsessed with the intersection of data and human behavior most of his life. His parents were teachers in North Dakota, and while other kids were going to 4-H, Pole was doing algebra and writing computer programs. \u201cThe stereotype of a math nerd is true,\u201d he told me when I spoke with him last year. \u201cI kind of like going out and evangelizing analytics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the marketers explained to Pole \u2014 and as Pole later explained to me, back when we were still speaking and before Target told him to stop \u2014 new parents are a retailer\u2019s holy grail. Most shoppers don\u2019t buy everything they need at one store. Instead, they buy groceries at the grocery store and toys at the toy store, and they visit Target only when they need certain items they associate with Target \u2014 cleaning supplies, say, or new socks or a six-month supply of toilet paper. But Target sells everything from milk to stuffed animals to lawn furniture to electronics, so one of the company\u2019s primary goals is convincing customers that the only store they need is Target. But it\u2019s a tough message to get across, even with the most ingenious ad campaigns, because once consumers\u2019 shopping habits are ingrained, it\u2019s incredibly difficult to change them.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Duhigg: Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: \u201cIf we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn\u2019t want us to know, can you do that? \u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}