The curvy mannequin piqued the interest of a couple of lanky teenage boys. Little did they know that as they groped its tight maroon shirt in the clothing store that day, video cameras were rolling.
At a mall, a father emerged from a store dragging his unruly young son by the scruff of the neck. The man had no idea his parenting skills were being immortalized.
At an office supply store, a mother decided to get an item from a high shelf by balancing her small child on her shoulders, unaware that she was being recorded.
These scenes might seem like random shopping bloopers, but they are meaningful to stores that are striving to engineer a better experience for the consumer and, ultimately, higher sales for themselves. Such clips, retailers say, can help them find solutions to problems in their stores — by installing seating and activity areas to mollify children, for instance, or by lowering shelves so merchandise is within easy reach.
Privacy advocates, though, are troubled by the array of video cameras, motion detectors and other sensors monitoring the nation's shopping aisles.
Many stores and the consultants they hire are using the gear not to catch shoplifters but to analyze and to manipulate consumer behavior. And while taping shoppers is legal, critics say it is unethical to observe people as if they were lab rats.
Companies that employ this technology say it is used strictly to determine characteristics such as age and gender, which help them discover how different people respond to various products. But privacy advocates fear that as the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will eventually cross the line and be used to identify individual consumers and gather more detailed information on them.
The most basic surveillance setup has been around for a few years. It uses video cameras in ceilings and sensors near fitting rooms to learn how many customers pass through the doors and where they go. At the other extreme, some retailers are taping shoppers' every movement and using specialized analysis to study their behavior.
