Tracking What You Buy | News@Ten | Fox 61 WTIC-TV Connecticut

Tracking What You Buy

Rick Hancock,

November 5, 2007

From time-to-time on this segment we've profiled Connecticut companies that use the Internet as a primary source for their business.

Tonight we'll take a look at a new haven company that has taken grocery store shopping to a new high tech level.

If you think many of the purchases you make at the supermarket happen by chance, you'd be wrong! In fact it's big business trying to figure what products you'll buy when you shop. One of the high tech companies that tracks consumer-buying habits is located in new haven. Retail optimization, incorporated says it's able to determine what you like primarily by collecting information from store discount cards used at checkout. Vaughn roller of retail optimization says "what we do is try to make better the opportunity for the consumer based on their preferences are to really extenuate the value of the products that they actually prefer. And buy on an in out basis on a regular basis. That info then helps the retailers and manufactures know what products they need to buy and market getting rid of products that aren't selling.

Vaughn roller says the parent companies of Shaws supermarket and stop and shop, plus Kraft, Pepsi and coca-cola have all hired the company to help keep tabs on who, what and when people are buying their products and if they need to adjust inventory. Roller says r-o-i uses the Internet to deliver up to second updates to its clients.

All of our software is resident on the Internet it's on our servers. So we actually operate with what is called as software as a service model, so it's not necessary for any of our customers to install software on their pc or on their workstation to access our information or our results they can get on the net log on and receive the information they require.

Research shows 30-percent of all Internet searches are people related.

There are plenty of search sites out there -- some of you may think they're great tools -- others may find it creepy that so much info is available!

"People search" sites like wink.com are increasingly popular.

Instead of public data like a home address or telephone number -- the site searches data on social networking sites like my-space.

Users search by criteria such as names, locations, companies or schools.

Two other "people search" sites worth checking out are spock.com and zoominfo.com.

And -- if you want to limit the personal information about "you" that's out there, try adjusting the privacy settings on your personal website.

If you want to find out more about people search websites, I've posted an article on fox 61.com that'll give you more information.

With municipal elections on Tuesday, and the presidential election next year, there's renewed attention on the role blogging plays in politics.

This week's podcast doesn't focus on a political blogger, but instead on the political strategy of blogging especially during a political scandal.

You may remember Dean Pagani as the chief communications officer for former Governor John Rowland.

Pagani is now a top public relations executive with Cashman and Katz -- he also writes about journalism, politics and p-r in his blog "Media Attaché."

Pagani advises political candidates to include blogging in their political strategy -- and says it's a great way to communicate with supporters.

but, there are some exceptions! Pagani says during former governor rowland's legal troubles, he would have advised him *not* to blog.

"The governor would have been a blogger, not on the issues but not on the issues that ultimately forced him to resign from office. Gov. Rowland was being advised to be very careful on what he said. If we in the rowland case had been allowed to fight that battle on the public relations front it would have been much different. I don't know if the outcome would have been different. But it would have been much more aggressive and out front. I think blogging in a case like that is not good."