>No, thank you.

Do any shoppers actually want this? I have legitimately never walked into a supermarket and thought "Gee, the experience today just wasn't as personalised as it could've been. I'll go elsewhere next time".

I was in an airport in China, in the departures area. They had a screen showing a live video from a camera pointing at passer-bys, it said "Stand here, we'll scan your face and tell you how to get to your gate". I did, and it showed my name and where to go. But, when did I link my face to my boarding pass and agree to this "commercial" use by the airport?

Before you enter China there are machines where you scan your passport, face, and fingerprints, so that's how they link faces to identities, but the example above shows the government gives this info out to... at least airport operators, but whom else?

They don't need to give it to anyone, since they already operate everything.

Safeway tracks my buying habits and their app suggests coupons for products I buy often. It's probably a loss leader sales tactic but I manage my spending.

If you are paying attention, there's (I think) a reasonable trade off by some companies. I'll take 3 minutes before each grocery trip to save $20+ a month via coupons in exchange for my purchasing history.

People very often do say the opposite, though.

"Gee the experience today was very personalized, I'm definitely coming back next time!"

A great, older, lower-tech example of this: I go to the store looking for Lays chips and they only have Ruffles. They're chips, sure, but I don't want Ruffles. I want Lays. I don't come back to that store because they don't have Lays.

I go to the store next door, they have Lays. It's exactly what I wanted. I now come back to that store frequently. Store 1 has no way of knowing what I wanted or why I didn't come back. Store 2 has no way of knowing why I suddenly started coming to the store.

I would still frequent Store 1 if they had the products I wanted. I only go to Store 2 because its (inadvertently) personalized for me.

Depends what they use it for. So pretty much a 1% chance.

If it offered things like how to get through the store faster based on what I buy, changes to the location of products I buy, or changes to open hours that are when I usually go.

Instead it will probably just give ads for products it thinks I am slightly more likely that average to buy. So no thanks.

Plenty of people say it about the staff. I don't see why they couldn't come to expect the same about their digital experience as well.

Personal interactions between a regular customer and regular staff are very different from interactions between a regular customer and a customer database.

The digital version is much more one-sided. Some people may like this kind of personalization. I find it’s very rarely useful to me and very frequently intrusive.

Most of the store chain shopping reward programs will accept a phone number, so I'll use [Local Area Code] 867-5309. It's generally always setup for me already, but sometimes needs an override because it "was used too many times today."