What They Know About You
An interesting article regarding the practices of Wal-Mart on consumer data-mining.
By its own count, Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on Teradata mainframes, made by NCR, at its Bentonville headquarters. To put that in perspective, the Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts.
Information at this kind of level is nothing but dangerous to the consumer and secured profit for the retailer (Wal-Mart and suppliers). Funny thing is: we as consumers allow this type of activity to continue on a regular basis. Wal-Mart is clearly on the edge of information technology in the reatail field. I wonder how long it will before the rest catch up?
“You can see the pattern of Wal-Mart’s mandates, and as Wal-Mart grows in power, it is getting more dictatorial,” he said. “The suppliers shake their heads and say, ‘I don’t want to go this way, but they are so big.’ Wal-Mart lives in a world of supply and command, instead of a world of supply and demand.”
I read in another article somewhere that they actually told a US manufacturer that they needed to open facilities in China to lower their costs. If they didn’t, then Wal-Mart wouldn’t put their product in their store. The power of the dollar.
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