Consumer Research: Watching You Eat

Consumer research used to entail questionnaires to ask you how you made your choices and how you enjoyed the product. That is now very old fashioned. New research paradigms include surveillance techniques:

“…Discreet ceiling cameras can zoom in on a face or a plate, or pull back to view a table or broad section of the lunchroom. They record not only what food you selected, but what you almost selected and how long you paused before deciding. Facial recognition software analyzes your level of enjoyment.

In the control room, technicians watch the action on individual screens and on a large overhead screen divided into quadrants.”

link: In the Netherlands, ‘Big Brother’ cafe watches what you eat

This is at the research stage. However, it is not difficult to imagine how food chains could use this type of market research. It could significantly increase effective product presentation. And, of course, it can be justified under the rubric of ‘customer care’.

As the music group Police said in the song, “Every Breath You Take”, the lyric goes… “I’ll be watching you…“.

Catherine Forsythe