Liz Sheppard
24 March 2015
Dr. Sherrin Frances
Targeting your Pregnancy
Big data is around us every day and we are contributing to the numbers daily, whether we know
it or not. Just by going to the grocery store or liking something on Facebook, data is being scraped from
that to formulate who you are as a person. According to Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How
We Live, Work, and Think, big data is defined as “the ability to crunch a vast quantity of information,
analyze it instantly, and draw astonishing conclusions from it”. Even with only a limited supply of
information, people can begin predicting what you will buy next or even your pregnancy you haven’t
told anyone about. Some people find it creepy, while others see big data as the new way to market to
their customers. Throughout time businesses are always trying to market to their customers to receive a
boost in sales, today companies such as Target are able to predict your pregnancy and possibly even
your due date just by what you buy.
Target is a well known store and a trusted place to buy everything you need from a lawn mower
to a gallon of milk. If you are a Target shopper, you probably have a reward card that you use there, but
did you know that the card you swipe when you are there, is recording every purchase you make,
resulting in a history of everything you buy. According to a Forbes article, “…retailers are studying these
details to figure out what you like, what you need, and which coupons are most likely to make you
happy”, in order to boost their sales and make you a valued consumer of their products. Target hired
Andrew Pole, a statistician, to look at all the histories of women who had signed up for baby registries in
the past, in order to predict what future pregnant women will buy before the baby comes. According to
Forbes, “As Pole’s computers crawled through the data; he was able to identify about 25 products
that…allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score.” With a detailed list of the 25
products, he could also predict the due date within a small window, allowing Target to send different
coupons during the different stages of pregnancy. When Pole was analyzing the baby registries in the
past he realized that “women were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of
their second trimester…also within the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like
calcium, magnesium and zinc.” According to a quote by ABC Science, “Target hired Andrew Pole to see if
he could data-mine his way into freshly pregnant uteruses.” With all of this new information, Target
could now really target you and send you related coupons, with the hope that you would use them.
Now you may be wondering how the pregnant women wouldn’t be suspicious of stalking when
they haven’t even signed up for a baby registry yet. Well Target has that covered, “If we send someone a
catalog and say ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s
going to make some people uncomfortable”, Pole states. So in order not to creep people out, Target
began mixing the baby coupons along with other coupons. Pole suggests, “We’d put an ad for a lawn
mower next to diapers…wine glasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were
chosen by chance.” Target found that “as long as the women didn’t think they were being spied on, they
will use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone one else on the block got the same mailer for
diapers and cribs.” Once again some would find this creepy, some may find it clever but from Targets
point of view they love it. They are bringing the mom-to-be’s into the store therefore boosting their
sales. Before Target hired Pole their revenue was around $44 billion, after hiring Pole their revenue rose
to $67 billion, that’s big data talking.
One specific example of this scraping of big data can be found in the book Big Data: A Revolution
That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. The example states “One day an angry man stormed
into a Target store in Minnesota to see a manager. The man states “My daughter got this in the mail!
She’s still in high school and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to
encourage her to get pregnant?” When the manager called the man a few days later to apologize, the
voice at the other end was conciliatory. “I had a talk with my daughter…it turns out there’s been some
activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August (58).” This example is a
real life event that happened and proves how powerful big data actually is. A hypothetical example
Forbes gives is this “Take a fictional shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March
bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium
supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s an 87% chance that’s she’s pregnant and due sometime in
late August”. Just by buying 5 simple things, Target could predict that you are actually pregnant and
even your due date.
I like the concept of big data, it is kind of creepy but you have to realize that you are always
being “watched” on some level. I think that big data can definitely aid in helping a business boost their
sales such as the Target example above. Big data is changing Target today, because they can pinpoint
their customers’ needs and send them coupons in hopes to bring them into the store and make them a
more valued customer. Some of the pitfalls on Targets scraping of data would be that the shoppers are
getting creeped out and therefore no longer shopping at Target, defeating the purpose of Andrew Poles
work. I think the Target example relates to the statement of “what, not why”, because Andrew Pole
found 25 things that women in the past have bought before registering for a baby registry and the focus
wasn’t why were they buying these things, it was this is what they are buying so these are our
“pregnancy predictors”.
Overall, people are going to see big data in various ways, they are going to think it’s creepy; they
are going to see it as useful. A Techland Time article states, “most people don’t really care about their
privacy…they care about the principle of privacy”, for example many people put different things out on
social media sites letting anyone know anything they want, so if you just take a step back you can realize
that you pretty much are throwing privacy out the window. Business will do anything to make a buck,
even if that means scraping all the data possible in order to predict what you will buy next or what you
might like. So the next time you swipe that card or enter that PIN, think about what that store knows
about you.
Works Cited
Hill, Kashmir. "How Target figured Out a Teen Girl Was Pregnant before Her Father Did." Forbes. N.p.,
16 Feb. 2012. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
<http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fkashmirhill%2F2012%2F02%2F16%2Fhowtarget-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did%2F>.
Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor, and Kenneth Cukier. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform
How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Print.
"Pregnant? Big Data Is Watching You." › Dr Karl's Great Moments In Science (ABC Science). N.p.,
n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/04/15/3985934.htm>.
Wagstaff, Keith. "How Target Knew a High School Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Parents Did |
TIME.com." Time. Time, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. <http://techland.time.com/2012/02/17/howtarget-knew-a-high-school-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-parents/>.