Prof: Companies today want to know you better

If you want to save money, you're going to have to give up your personal information to companies, according to one Penn professor.

Joseph Turow, a Communication professor and author of Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age, spoke to an audience of about 20 at the Penn Bookstore on Wednesday.

Supermarkets, department stores and Web sites are data mining, hoping to boost sales by targeting specific people, Turow said.

"We are moving into a new era," Turow said. "We are at the tip of the beginning of the individual being addressed in the mass media."

These companies are following Pareto's Rule - 20 percent of customers make up 80 percent of revenues - to more efficiently determine to whom to cater.

For example, Bloomingdale's Klondike system immediately alerts cashiers at its department stores which shoppers are top customers. Employees can then offer specific promotions and special deals to them.

Turow said that instead of competing with neighbors for the prettier lawn and faster car, individuals are competing for better deals - 'keeping up with the Joneses' in the digital age.

"Consumers will now have to compete and prove themselves to companies." Turow said. "This is a society built on envy. How much are you going to buy?"

Turow said that this system plays on envy in two ways.

There is "envy that companies have about other companies' consumers," Turow said, "and individual envy, when one feels others are being treated differently. If you wanted to be treated well, prove to us that you'll be a good customer [and] . give us info" about yourself.

As examples, he noted that airlines offer different prices to more loyal customers, The New York Times uses third-party databases to sell subscribers' information, and Google Inc. saves word searches for over five years.

Turow said that advertisers believe they have to focus on certain types of people.

"This is discrimination in a different sense," Turow said. "The companies make us feel comfortable based on how they see us."

Second-year Communication student Deb Wainwright said that, before the talk, she had been unaware of the way advertisers target individuals.

"This is fascinating and a little terrifying. I just want to be aware, and I don't think we are," Wainwright said.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.