Smarter than Computer

I believe that War-Mart is making the successful conversion on its data. I am actually impressed by their data gathering in that they not only collect enormous amount of data, but more importantly they can make connections between different data. The article talked about how Wal-Mart can “predict” the demand and I believe this is possible largely due to the fact that its reseachers can relate random data and identify a trend or a general personality of the shoppers.

The excellence in Wal-Mart data gathering is that it has both width and depth.
Width for its technolgy enables the collection of large amount of data needed and depth in its researchers’ ability to accurately analyze and string these data into trends. As a result, it can predict the future demand of the customers and supply the demand faster than other retailers, giving them a competitive advantage.

For example, during Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart was able to predict the servere damage of Hurrican and insufficient government rescue resource and tie these two with Lousiana’s low income population. The result was that during the first few weeks when the hurrican hit the state, the company was able to send off trucks with sufficeint food supplies to the refugees since it has prepared for this moment long before. All the other retailers, such as Target or K-Mart, as well as nation’s rescue teams had ran out of food supply and Wal-Mart is the one that actually sold its supplying materials to them so that they can go sell foods to refuges

Less dramatic but similar experience also happened to myself approximately 4 to 5 years ago when Hurrican Rita hit Houston area. I remember walking down the store and comapred to Target and Kroger that I went, Wal-Mart had the most amount of supplies. In addition, it was having sale on the items that were appropriate such as board games, cards, and other products which can be used to kill time when electricity runs out and the only soucre of light is ran by batteries.

Regarding the privacy in collecting data, I can not say that what Wal-Mart is doing does not completely bother me. I think the biggest issue is not so much about your privacy in life, since it is big deal to let the market researcher know what type of daily purchases you make or what type of location you would like to go, etc. These are not top-secret information and therefore I would have no problem in sharing them. However, it is rather a uneasy feeling to have someone else track down the record of you without you even knowing. The action Wal-Mart is taking can be essentially regarded the same as that of a stalker among many people's minds.

But there is important fact to remind ourselves. Behind the actions of perhaps controversial data-gathering, the intention of the company is to serve us better by studying us in details. If someone is trying to do something nice to me and he is putting a lot of effort in learning what I like, I do not have problem with him not reporting his actions to me. This is essentially what Wal-Mart is doing; studying our life habits or purchasing patterns so that they can provide more useful material to us at the same time making benefit off of our purchase. We should consider Wal-Mart's extensive data-gathering as more of a mutual action rather than stalker, who usually gathers information for the benefit of himself and potentially uses it against you.

Therefore if we look the intentions beyond those actions, the data-gathering of Wal-Mart, although it can raise a few eye-brows at times, can be approved. More specifically and as we have learned in class, the Wal-Mart is trying to create accurate persona of its customers. The company wants to know more than just what is selling well and what is not; it also wants to know the general personality drives these purchases so they can provide more items that they belive will be favored by the same personality as well. I feel as if Wal-Mart wants to get to “know” its customers by creating the real-life image of me and people like myself. If the company is taking actions on its own to make my shopping life better, I, as a male especially, have no problem with it.