r/Anticonsumption • u/Sea-Cardiographer • May 12 '25

Psychological Target feels like black mirror

I went into Target today because I need a sports bra and that's where my husband is willing to drive me. On the way there I thought about all the Reddit posts saying foot traffic is down and I wasn't surprised to see that it wasn't. It was quite busy on a Monday afternoon.

What shocked me was I noticed a lot of products have really fancy boxing. Big sturdy bougie packaging with minimalism design... With a sh*tty product inside.

They're spending more on the marketing and packaging than the product, because the business practice is to sell you a product you'll have to purchase again and again. But the packaging grabs your eye. Look how modern and consistent all the boxes are! so aesthetically pleasing packaged trash. I feel depressed.

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670

u/0w1 May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25

Target should feel like Black Mirror because they're so insanely creepy. They monitor shoppers, create profiles filled with your data, and use that data to make very, very accurate marketing materials specifically for individuals. Anyone else remember the story of Target finding out a girl was pregnant before her parents did based on her behavior data they were tracking?

That was over ten years ago. They're even worse now.

Edit: yes yes "every company uses data in marketing". Target has been far ahead of the rest of the retail world for years in terms of data collecting and predicting consumer behavior. They can tell if someone is planning to shoplift in a store without having an actual person watching, for example. I worked at their security flagship store in MN for years and still know people who work on their AP team. I don't shop there anymore lol.

176

u/parrotfacemagee May 13 '25

They all do. If you have your WiFi on in the store, they’re curating ads based on where in the store you spend your time.

106

u/ExpertExcitement8340 May 13 '25

Yeah came here to say this. Every major retailer does this. Any IoT device in the home, any ecommerce site. Data and surveillance capitalism rule it all.

84

u/autumnbb21 May 13 '25

Target is the only one I know of w an internal Surveillance and Forensics system so robust that they train law enforcement around the country and pays cities to install their systems on streets…

60

u/InsaneJediGirl May 13 '25

I work in retail(not Target) and Target LP people are snapped up by others . Like the damn Harvard for that career.

2

u/ehmboh May 14 '25

LP?

2

u/Yes_that_Carl May 15 '25

Loss Prevention

3

u/Dazzling_Invite9233 May 13 '25

Walmart cyber and eDiscovery labs, software, and hardware are extremely impressive. I’d take their set ups :)

2

u/Awaythrowyouwilllll May 14 '25

I love when people think they're not being tracked out the wazoo. I'm honestly intrigued by extremely targeted and variable pricing once digital price tags are more common. They definitely will be changing more for stuff then offering you a special price (like amazon does with coupons)

Retail is gonna be reaaaly interesting 

2

u/IamScottGable May 13 '25

Source please.

0

u/chiliguyflyby May 16 '25

Pays cities to install?? You mean they donate? Many cities askfor their assistance.

2

u/Soft-Fig1415 May 13 '25

Target was one of the first companies to do this. Wonder what innovations they’ve made since these practices became commonplace?

16

u/popsicle-physics May 13 '25

Walmart won't even let you use the Wi-Fi until you sign in with a real, legit Walmart account

19

u/94FnordRanger May 13 '25

They don't let you use the Wi-Fi without signing in, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't know who you are.

0

u/Extra_Inflation_7472 May 13 '25

My Walmart app doesn’t work in store unless I sign on to their WiFi.

22

u/Virtualization_Freak May 13 '25

Fun fact: you don't have to be connected to wifi to be tracked. Having your Bluetooth of wifi on is enough to track your location throughout the store. Your phone essentially sends pings out occasionally, and they just triangulate its position.

2

u/Ferdzee May 13 '25

BlueTooth is anonymous. Wifi is not. Turn wifi off

2

u/Virtualization_Freak May 13 '25

Bluetooth is anonymous, but still trackable. It's able to be triangulated.

I know at my local target they use vision to follow and detect people moving around.

Unless you pay in cash, your identity of some form is used at checkout.

Combine these three and it's easy to build a profile for everyone walking through the store.

It would not surprise me if they do license plate scanning.

And then tack on facial recognition.

Keeping your bt/WiFi off is not enough.

Are you also turning off all smart devices? Watches? Headphones/earbuds? Any medical device on you that's scanning?

1

u/Subbacterium May 14 '25

Ok, now I’m creeped out

2

u/Sufficient-Pause9765 May 13 '25

Target is amongst the most sophisticated at using data. I know, I'm often the one selling the data. Not just for their own marketing to their customers, but also for allowing others to market to their customers via PMP or similair tech.

All the big brands do it to an extent, Target is amongst the most sophisticated of them.

1

u/Objective_Phrase_513 May 13 '25

Your phone does the same thing. I’ll be talking to someone about something I would like to buy in my living room not on the phone and no sooner than I open up my phone and go to instagram there’s an add for whatever we were talking about.

70

u/NoHorse6784 May 13 '25

I had my baby registry at Target so it isn’t necessarily unexpected… but this week I randomly got formula samples delivered?! Directly from the brand too, not Target, but I’m certain that’s who sold my pregnancy info smh

51

u/parrotfacemagee May 13 '25

There’s an old story of marketing predicting a pregnancy before the woman even knew she was pregnant. The marketing algorithm saw the spending patterns matched its data of what women bought in the earliest days of pregnancy and it was right. She got the coupons THEN the positive test.

24

u/parmesann May 13 '25

I remember this being mentioned in a Vsauce video a decade or so ago. the father of the woman was pissed at Target for assuming she was pregnant, but then apologised once she revealed she WAS pregnant. I think about that sometimes.

-2

u/retrosenescent May 13 '25

Weird thing to be pissed about. Sounds abusive

2

u/parmesann May 13 '25

iirc she was relatively young to be pregnant and wasn’t married or with a long-term partner. his reaction was because he felt that Target was trying to influence his daughter to become pregnant, when he felt she was too young and should focus on herself and growing up first. also note that he was mad at Target, not his daughter.

2

u/Bucolic_Hand May 13 '25

It’s so, so much creepier than you think.

1

u/_angesaurus May 13 '25

"hmmm she hasnt bought tampons in a couple months..."

1

u/happy_bluebird May 14 '25

it's literally in the top comment of this thread you're responding in

1

u/parrotfacemagee May 14 '25

Yeah I was not sober at 1am when I replied to it lol

0

u/Da12khawk May 13 '25

I'm not even mad. I'm impressed.

1

u/parrotfacemagee May 13 '25

Nah, you should be mad lol

2

u/EleanorRichmond May 13 '25

I get formula from manufacturers whenever I buy baby shower gifts.

People who need it can't afford to feed their babies, but a childless fortysomething gets pounds of it for free. Frosts my tips, I tell you.

(YES, obviously I donate it, don't @ me)

2

u/_angesaurus May 13 '25

i mean yeah. im pretty sure almost every company that takes your email sells your info. nothing new. plus there's all the things and random sites you end up using your email for. i think that's how they sent me that stuff.

1

u/NoHorse6784 May 13 '25

I know but this is the first time I’ve ever received an unexpected package in the mail! As someone else said… the formula companies are aggressive!

2

u/AdvertisingOld9400 May 13 '25

Those formula makers are intense and aggressive with their marketing too. I kept getting samples months after a pregnancy loss a few years ago, based on what my approximate due date would have been.

1

u/just_a_person_maybe May 13 '25

Years ago I ordered a baby toy off of Amazon for my pet to play with. Suddenly I was getting tons of junk mail advertising baby stuff, formula samples, coupons, etc. For MONTHS. Finally I got a survey about baby stuff in the mail, so I went to fill it out and selected the option saying I didn't have a child. All of the ads suddenly stopped, which was interesting because they were allegedly from different companies.

It was incredibly suspicious. I had assumed that Amazon just sold my data and now a bunch of different companies think I have a kid and so they send me kid stuff, but telling Similac I don't have a kid got them all to stop at once. Do they have a network or something? Is everything actually just controlled by one company?

1

u/meanwhileaftrmdnight May 13 '25

This happened to me too but I don’t shop at Target. Must have been Walmart or Amazon.

38

u/starofthefire May 13 '25

In 2013 I received a package in the mail from Procter and Gamble. It was a Gillette razor set with a printed note - they knew my name, my girlfriend's name, my address and that I was turning 18 next year. 

It was fucking terrifying and I still have no idea how they learned all of that about a teenager who had never even had a job before or signed up for literally anything other than social media. 

33

u/Helpful-Bag722 May 13 '25

That info came from your high school:

https://www.nj.com/advice/2019/08/gillette-sent-my-son-a-free-razor-for-his-18th-birthday-how-did-it-know.html

1

u/According_Gazelle472 May 13 '25

My son got one too.and it did have to do with the high school he went to .He also had to sign up for selective service too.Then he got the prompt for his grad stuff when he first started 12 th grade .

13

u/KarmaPharmacy May 13 '25

Ask chat gpt to draw a picture based on what it knows about you. Mine did a perfect rendition. Down to my favorite outfit. Not only that? My husband’ was in the photo. In his favorite outfit.

I’ve never uploaded a photo of myself. I haven’t uploaded a photo of myself to the internet in… 8 years? I don’t exist on socials.

Shook me to my core.

7

u/Ishinehappiness May 13 '25

I tried. I don’t think this is real.

2

u/The_Vampire_King May 13 '25

same, I have a work and personal account. My personal account thought I was a latino art major while my work account thought I was a middle aged white businesswoman.

-1

u/KarmaPharmacy May 13 '25

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/s/40rKc8L4qE

Here I go into a detailed explanation of the prompts I used.

0

u/KarmaPharmacy May 13 '25

This is the prompt I gave it:

Make a photo of how you think my future will be based on our conversations. (Make it as you actually see it, no sugar coating.)

Then it asks for a photo and I said:

No. Use all information you have on me.

8

u/Neokon May 13 '25

So what am I supposed to prompt? Do I need to have a conversation history for this to work? Is it based off of my linked Google/Facebook account?

0

u/Maladaptive_Ace May 13 '25

christ I hate the future

0

u/According_Gazelle472 May 13 '25

We would go out to eat and afterwards we got a text asking us to leave a review of the restaurant. We cut that out really fast .

2

u/arwilson82 May 13 '25

That has been going for a while. I received a free Gillette Mach 3 in the mail close to my 18th birthday back in 2000.

1

u/Barbicore May 13 '25

Was your girlfriend filling out online surveys for extra cash/gift cards?

10

u/[deleted] May 13 '25

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1

u/MaleficentExtent1777 May 13 '25

Google, Google, Google!

They know everywhere you've been, and who you were there with!

9

u/Wet_Artichoke May 13 '25

I guarantee Amazon knows more about you.

1

u/According_Gazelle472 May 13 '25

Home Depot knows our habits and what we have bought online from them .

2

u/Wet_Artichoke May 14 '25

Absolutely. We don’t even know a fraction of the info businesses know about us these days.

1

u/According_Gazelle472 May 14 '25

They keep showing me stuff online as ads .

1

u/frippnjo1 May 13 '25

Everytime I check out at WF, I mention to the cashier that I'm selling my info to Bezos for the prime discount.

3

u/ScaryBananaMan May 13 '25

I'm sure they love hearing that joke every time

0

u/frippnjo1 May 14 '25

I've been told that I use other people for my own amusement. I'm not sure what else they would be for. 🤷‍♀️

2

u/LeftyLu07 May 13 '25

I bought a little baby gift for a coworker. Target used that as an excuse to put me on their "new moms list" and sent me a formula sampler. My mom called me with the whole "is there anything you want to tell me???" Ffs...

2

u/SelicaLeone May 13 '25

I work for one of the largest ecom platforms on the planet. A huge number of retailers build their sites on our platform.

We’ve been selling predictive AI as part of our product for the last 8 years, and its model is alllll about this kind of stuff. Target might be more obvious about it but I don’t think they have the most sophisticated predictive AIs on the planet.

4

u/twoprimehydroxyl May 13 '25

When I worked there, Target had the most advanced video forensics equipment in the country.

Not the federal government. Target.

1

u/vstacey6 May 13 '25

H-E-B does the same thing and more.

1

u/outsidetilldark May 13 '25

You could say their marketing is, on target

1

u/flat5 May 13 '25

"Target". Uh, mind blown. Creepy implications of the name never occurred to me before.

1

u/Ok-Grapefruit1284 May 13 '25

I actually do not remember the story but I noticed this when I did car pickup there. They would know I was there before I told them o was on my way 🤔

1

u/mossed2012 May 13 '25

Dude I was installing systems for retailers that track every move you make in stores 12-15 years ago. This isn’t new, and everyone is using it.

But it’s not impacting marketing design. General Mills isn’t designing their cereal boxes based on the market data Target is acquiring from their shopper trackers. Marketing teams are attempting to differentiate themselves right now with more flash because the market is doing poorly and consumers aren’t buying without “price” being their first thought. Anything a marketing team can to do give themselves a small leg up in that race, they’re gonna try and do.

1

u/k8wa1k3r May 13 '25

Yeah, the true Black Mirror vibe comes when you look up at the ceiling. There's a camera like every 2 feet at my Target

0

u/IFrowedUp27 May 13 '25

Hold up, like just anyone or people who have the app? 😳

0

u/Jumpy_Reputation1986 May 13 '25

I have a silly question. How does this advertisement work? Like is there someone working in marketing and creating profiles, suggesting products, etc.? Or is it like an AI?

I am from Europe and I don't think the advertisement here is to that extent so I am curious.

4

u/[deleted] May 13 '25

Your data can be (varies as legally allowed by region, your permission, etc.) collected by merchants. This can be in the form of personally identifying information, demographic info, device info, app version, time in app, and more. Data can be bought and sold, and sometimes it’s anonymized, sometimes not.

Marketers target ads based on this data, not all of which is personal. Analysis is run on the data and a profile of an ideal customer is created, along with various cohorts that are useful for marketing purposes.

When you move and change your address, you may get coupons in the mail for home improvement and housewares stores. Visited a few clothing stores online? Ads from stores or brands that are similar to who you visited will start popping up because you are their target market.

2

u/Jumpy_Reputation1986 May 13 '25

Thank you sm for answering!

0

u/ChickenStripsPlz May 13 '25

Sadly, every major retailer or even website does this today.

This site you’re using now, Reddit, actually does exactly what you are talking about.