Retailers Can Track Your Facial Expressions Too

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Yesterday we learned we can pay with our faces (at least in Finland), so it shouldn't come as a surprise that retailers are using new technology to gauge interest in products by registering customer facial expression. Welcome to Minority Report, Part II: Shopper's Edition.

A St. Petersburg-based start-up Synqera sells software for checkout devices or computers that tailor marketing messages to a customer's gender, age, and mood, according to Fast Company reports. "If you are an angry man of 30, and it is Friday evening, it may offer you a bottle of whiskey," said Ekaterina Savchenko, the company's head of marketing.

As Forbes points out in an article from May, when Nordstrom discontinued their program to stalk customers in-store through their passive Wi-Fi phone settings, brick-and-mortar is at a disadvantage to online shops like Amazon. The e-tailer and thousands of others are able to quietly track and aggregate users' shopping habits then use the information to tailor experiences for those shoppers. In-store retailers are increasingly turning to big-brother-esque technology— such as facial recognition—to provide similar customer info, but most have been shut down because it makes customers too uncomfortable. For now.
· Retail Stores Are Tracking You Like Crazy [Fast Company]
· Now You Can Check Out With Your Face [Racked]