Therefore in this blog I will look into answer to the question, Are clubcards and privilege schemes forms of surveillance?
David Lyon, Surveillance Studies an overview suggests that everybody is involved in surveillance somehow “We are all in a sense implicated in surveillance, both as watchers and the watched.”
One company that uses a clubcard scheme is Tesco’s. This clubcard scheme encourages people to spend money in the store and receive rewards. Tesco’s gain from this because they can see what the individual customer is spending money on. They can then send offers and other promotions to their customers. This is a form of surveillance and it can be very popular with the customers because it looks like the companies value their customers.
This is similar to the ways in which Amazon survey their customers. For example when you purchase something off of this website Amazon recommends other things that you may be interested in because if what you bought.
Is this type of Surveillance fair?
On the one hand it is fair that companies such as Amazon and Tesco’s look at items we’ve bought and recommend and give us offers on things that we might be interested. On the other hand it might not be fair because what gives them the right to survey our lives. It is similar to facebook; this is because a picture of you may be put onto facebook. This picture maybe seen as embarrassing and one that you don’t want people to see. This could lead to you un-tagging yourself in the picture. However just because your name isn’t in the picture people will still recognise you. In my opinion the type of surveillance used by companies is fair because we can benefit from the information that they send us.
This is a link with information on Tesco Clubcards
http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/clubcard/
No comments:
Post a Comment