AS almost everyone knows, we have entered a period in which companies can predict people’s purchases, often with uncanny accuracy. In the near future, they might even use those predictions to enroll you in special programs in which you receive goods and services, and are asked to pay for them, before you have actually chosen them. Call it predictive shopping.
Some companies already encourage people to sign up for recurring purchases and deliveries — in a way, an extension of automatic bill payment. An early model is the Book-of-the-Month Club, which dates from 1926. In the modern era, predictive shopping, based on large data sets, your personal characteristics and your own past choices, could be a real blessing. It might make your life simpler, and in that sense, more free. (And of course, you would be allowed to opt out.)
But the prospect might also seem alarming. Companies could end up charging you for things you don’t want, and if sellers create detailed profiles on the basis of your previous purchases, your privacy might seem at risk.
What do Americans actually think about predictive shopping? To find out, I produced a nationally representative survey, conducted with about 500 respondents, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
I discovered, to my surprise, that a significant percentage of Americans already welcome predictive shopping.
The situation was presented like this: Suppose that over the years, your favorite online bookseller has compiled a great deal of information about your preferences. On the basis of a new algorithm, it thinks it knows what you will want to buy before you do. I asked, would you enroll in a program in which the seller sent you books that it knew you would purchase, and billed your credit card? (Anyone could send the book back for a refund or just opt out of the program.) Fifty-nine percent said no, but 41 percent said yes.
Second, I explored whether people would react differently if sellers signed people up without their consent. I asked, would you approve or disapprove if the seller automatically, and without your explicit consent, enrolled you in a program in which it sent you books that it knew you would purchase, and billed your credit card?
Twenty-nine percent said they would approve, and 71 percent said they would disapprove. People do care about explicit consent. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that nearly a third of Americans would approve of such a program.
Books are, of course, an unusual commodity. We might like the idea of stumbling onto new topics and ideas. Whenever shopping itself is fun, whenever serendipity and surprise are valuable, we might want to choose on our own, hence reject predictive shopping.
What, then, about ordinary household goods, such as soap and toilet paper?
Some companies already offer subscription programs for such goods. Would we welcome such programs even if we had not signed up for them?
I asked people to imagine that their home came equipped with a monitor designed to “know” when such goods ran out. I asked, would you approve of a system in which the home monitor automatically, and without your explicit consent, bought goods for you and billed your credit card? (As with the books, you could return the goods for a refund, or just opt out.) A majority disapproved, 69 percent to 31 percent. Maybe people do not trust those who would run any such program. But it is worth underlining the fact that nearly one-third would approve.
That proportion grew when people were asked the question differently, so that the program didn’t enroll them without their explicit consent. In that case, 38 percent said they would sign up, while 62 percent said they would not.
Will people’s answers change in coming years?
To obtain some clues, I conducted a smaller and more informal survey of university students, asking the same kinds of questions.
On books, most of them rejected predictive shopping, but for household staples, there was a large difference: 69 percent approved of automatic purchases by the home monitor, even without consent.
That’s revealingly high. It suggests the possibility that among younger people, enthusiasm is growing for predictive shopping, especially for routine goods where shopping is an annoyance and a distraction. For such goods, predictive shopping promises to be liberating, at least if safeguards are in place to ensure that people aren’t charged for goods they don’t want.
On the basis of this evidence, here’s a prediction of my own: In the coming decades, we are going to see much more in the way of predictive shopping, and a lot of people are going to be enthusiastic about it.
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