Data Mining
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all
Through data mining, companies and retailers are now able to personalize coupons, advertisements, and other marketing strategies for consumers. With more information the internet, retailers like “Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars you own”. With such a wide variety of information available, it is becoming much easier for companies to use their information networks to make inferences of what the consumer’s choices will be. Purchases at the store can be compiled and used to predict all kinds of information about the consumer, even pregnancy.
These retailers are using information to find a relationship between certain habits and products. In the same way that strong relationships are developed between people, there are similarly strong relationships between actions and objects. In class we discussed strong triadic closure wherein if there are two strong relationships between individuals A-C and A-B, there will be a tie between B and C. Given that consumer A has bought product C and D and consumer B also bought product C, it is likely that B would also be interested in purchasing D. By looking at the sales history and demographics of their customers, retailers can use this information to personalize their marketing tools for individual consumers and make additional profits.