Consumer surveillance practices pit 'informationally' powerful entities that target and sort consumers into segmented and stratified categories against a consuming public that is ambivalent and, to some extent, apathetic about being surveilled in this way. While consumers are relatively unaware of the social effects to which these data information practices contribute, consumption patterns are continually evaluated by marketers that simultaneously modify and target their wares. Consumer surveillance may be able to meaningfully and in some cases profoundly shape the consumption behaviours of consumers, yet this same surveillance serves to alter, modify, and transform the very practices of consumer profiling.
This seminar will detail the means by which a particular marketing practice, loyalty programs, and the technologies that are associated with them, are continually modified in relation to the consumers they seek to target. Loyalty programs are constantly modified within a matrix of gauged consumer response and engagement, data evaluation, program comparisons, and technological infrastructure. Neither consumers or loyalty programs are passive in this context, rather the surveillance practices here must be understood as a dynamic feedback loop with significant implications for how we understand the future of a consumer society Zygmunt Bauman suggests has become the "cognitive and moral focus of life, the integrative bond of the society, and the focus of systematic management" (1992).
Everyone welcome!
The Surveillance Studies Centre
c/o David Murakami Wood
Department of Criminology
University of Ottawa
Canada