Collapse of the data mine

Take note of IBM's Smarter World initiative Especially, the part "Fifteen petabytes of data are created everyday. What if we could turn all of that data, videos, pictures, text, blogs, market movements and transactions into smarter information for better decisions?"

I am very curious about what the effect of information feedback will be in a world full of the systems that IBM envisions in the Smarter World. I started wondering about information feedback due to datamining in 2005: Albert Heijn, a Dutch super market branch started collecting purchasing data per customer using the so called 'Bonus-card'.

Every week certain articles are on offer at (highly) reduced prices, but to get the discount a customer is required to get his personal Bonus-card scanned. In practice customers let the card be scanned every time them pass the cash desk. As such the shopping lists of unique customers can be linked. Datamining techniques are used to extract for example correlations in purchase-likelihood of groups of products.

My greatest worry was that the super market would stop selling products that seemed to be selling in low amounts according to the Bonus-card data. In particular I feared that the super market would offer 'home-brand' products next to 'A-brand' products at a sufficiently reduced price to compell a great number of customers into buying the home-brand. Eventually, I feared, the A-brand product would be taken out of stock because of a 'proven' lowered interest, as shown by the data collected using the Bonus-cards.

The reason for the super market to get the A-brands out and selling home-brands in the first place is that home-brands deliver higher profits. By the way, it's a cheap steal to copy a product that has been thoroughly developed over decases and then to make a cheap immitation. The reason for me not to like this strategy is that the home-brand products of Albert Heijn are inferior to the A-brand products and I simple want to be able to choose the A-brand product. Albert Heijn has shown in the last two years that the choise however is theirs by taking out more and more great products and replacing them with badly immitated stubs that serve merely for stomach stuffing. Pitty them.

Now there is an alternative, still... Jan Linders! This super market offers A-brands full front and alternatively they have a
home-brand that is cheaper, though still satisfying to consume.

If you are displeased with Albert Heijns profit-first, taste-last strategy and you are lucky to have a Jan Linders super market near you, I can highly recommend this branch, both for it's proper product assortment as for their friendly shop assistents. They are generally over 18, allowed to decide independantly and they know what they are selling. Contrary to those at your average Albert Heijn.