Market Research

Adam Arvidsson’s article for this week, entitled “On the Pre-History of the Panoptic Sort: Mobility in Market Research” discussed the evolution of surveillance technologies utilized by researchers to gauge consumer purchasing trends. Since the 1950s, the idea of marketing has shifted from disciplining consumer demand to utilizing the different ideas that the consumers and purchasers themselves have created.

This new perspective, as Arvidsson notes, has created a shift from “containment” to control.” Statistical techniques (i.e. surveys and focus groups) were included in marketing schemes to better target consumers. One primary example I could think of was data mining processes. These occur essentially through websites monitoring user’s online browsing habits and selling that information to advertisers. Advertisers are then able place advertisements on website that relate directly to your browsing interests. It is no coincidence that the ads we see on Facebook are generally tailored to our demographic or specific interests. This is also very well illustrated with amazon’s “you might also like this” feature that appears after searching for various goods. This type of monitoring is nearly ubiquitous (and may arguably be convenient) and enables marketers to paint a very descriptive picture of each member of their target demographic.