Retail Anthropology: Surveillance Of Consumers

When one goes to the store one expects to be monitored constantly. But this may be the reality we live in every time we make a purchase. Retail anthropology is the study of consumers’ shopping habits in order to choose the best locations, retail sites, and designs for the space within each store. This may seem like such a good idea for businesses and even for the people, but is it really a good idea? Being able to control what the masses may buy can be a powerful tool against the people. Surveillance of consumers by retail anthropologists is manipulative and unethical because it’s an invasion of privacy, there is no consent, and the video could be misused for any purpose they desire. Periodically one can purchase anything in a store and many
In these videos the information captured is expected to be kept private, but when released may be used to profit of off people. For example, When Paco Underhill made books and released all of the information that he had collected over the years he profited of off the people. At first this might have seemed as an interesting study that has been hidden and now because of Paco’s generosity an amazing gift to the people. When in reality Paco profited on all of the information that he released. He released video’s and information such as how and why costumers buy in his two books. None of the people in the videos had no idea that they were being used to make money. For instance, in Paco’s book Call of the Mall he describes why costumer’s bough, and how the business was more successful. Videos were the visual aids that he released in order to give his views a better look into his studies. What Paco did on releasing information about how to appeal to the consumer so that they could buy and profiting of on the people in his studies is unacceptable for anyone.
Although one may argue that all of the work that Paco published helped so many people understand how and why consumers bought items. In reality it was a conflict of interest for Paco. He made money which for anyone would be the primary motivation to sell the information. For instance, it’s like rewarding a student the more people are turned in for cheating the more extra credit would be assigned to the student. This is exactly what happened. Paco turned in his classmates and gave them up just for a couple of bonus