Radio Shack, Inc. ended a decades long policy of collecting customer information at the point of sale. Such a policy, or lack thereof, is long overdue in the American retail industry.
Since the 1970s, Radio Shack collected the names, addresses and other pieces of information that are otherwise unnecessary to the sale of solar panels or batteries. In their press release, they cited reasons such as “annoying the customer” and “time consuming” as reasons for ending the practice. In short, they want to offer a “better customer experience.”
Considering their “You’ve got questions. We’re a bunch of idiots.” store atmosphere, the complete abandonment of its original mission as a geek hardware retailer and the unbelievably messy shops, Radio Shack is on its last leg anyway. It wants to be like the giant chains but succeeds only in higher prices and smaller selection than the giants.
While mindless privacy advocates will cheer the move because of their fears of a mindless government that fears mindless terrorists, Radio Shack has simply acknowledged that an organization can collect only so much information before it reaches a point of diminishing returns on the value of that information.
Since the dawn of the consumer credit card, Radio Shack and other retail giants have been collecting personal data and assessing financial risk of the entire country by offering store credit cards. Those accepted will be accepted everywhere. Those rejected are locked out of purchasing power, forced to live on cash and go deeper into financial rejection with each additional credit application.
While living on cash shouldn’t be a social stigma, in the United States, it is frequently associated with crime. If you are unwilling to use credit, you must be up to something or a complete bum.
When all the major retail machines like Sears, Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City et al are all processing credit applications all year around, all over the country, you can bet that these companies know exactly who has money, in what geographic locations and in what concentration. Those with money are socialized into associating credit with lawful behavior and good citizenship. Those without money are irrelevant. They have been effectively socialized and conditioned to stay out of the establishments.
In this sense, anonymity is as irrelevant as privacy.
In a new era of anti-terrorism tracking, it’s also possible that Radio Shack no longer wants to know about their customers unless they are good, clean, no risk credit customers. It should keep government agencies out of their hair. However, being staunch advocates of Occam’s Raiser, we’ll continue with the information diminishing returns theory.
Expect other companies to follow Radio Shack’s lead under the same guise of respecting customer privacy. Cyberista takes the cynical position because those who have the ability to pay for consumer electronics with credit will go for the option and happily turn over their personal information and agree to receive the company’s dead tree catalogs by snail mail while those who cannot pay with credit with come ready with cash.
For everyone else, there’s always the web.
