Marketers Invading Privacy - Essay Example

of the of the Concerned English 27 February Marketers Invading Privacy The article How Companies Learn Your Secrets, published in The New York Times is revealing and positively shocking in the sense that it indicates the dawn of an era where the privacy of the customers is open to the invasiveness of the marketers interested in taking advantage of their habit patterns to influence their purchasing habits. If a shopkeeper intends to peep into the choices and preferences of one’s customers to serve them better, it is to a great extent understandable.

Ultimately business is about fulfilling the needs of the customers and how can one expect a seller to fulfill the needs of one’s customers, unless one has a pragmatic insight into their choices and aspirations. However, the kind of intrusion talked about by Duhigg in How Companies Learn Your Secrets, positively smacks of eavesdropping into the personal lives of the customers. The kind of customer analysis that the modern day marketers resort to, as told by Duhigg in the article, culling information about customers’ reproductive life, collecting intricate data about the financial aspects of their life, desperately trying to know about their likes and dislikes pertaining to all spheres of their life, sounds simply shocking.

And this too is done by using the most skilled and accomplished psychologists, the most astute of data analysts, the latest digital equipment and software, indicative more of a CIA conspiracy, than an innocuous attempt to know about customers’ preferences. The marketing scenario portrayed by Duhigg is simply abominable and detesting. Works Cited Duhigg, Charles. “16 February 2012: How Companies Learn Your Secrets”. The New York Times. 27 February 2012. .