Kshira Saagar, head of analytics at clothing retailer The Iconic, said the company spent its efforts trying to work out not who someone was, but instead what kind of behaviours they demonstrated. He said that beyond a customer’s email address and delivery location, they didn’t have much data on gender or age, and the role of the algorithm was to make inferences to customise the shopping experience.
“We don’t want to treat you based on who you are, but how you behave,” Saagar said.
“You could be an 85-year-old grandma and shop like a 20-year-old kid. We’ll treat you like a 20-year-old kid because that’s what you’re expressing yourself as, and that’s your intent and behaviour.”
Saagar did admit that the ultimate goal for marketers could easily cross the line between helpful and intrusive.
“There’s still an ethical debate on how do we use this for marketing. For example, we can have an algorithm that can predict what are they doing, when are they shopping — but what we’ll do with it, that’s the next question. So the idea is you can know whatever you want, but we don’t want to go (to) extremes.”