ABSTRACT
A columnist in the Times of India, 6 September 2006 asked readers to picture a busy evening in a small town supermarket in India in 2010. ‘Jagannath Dash the manager, watches a large-screen display with satisfaction. He sees from the display that it is time to open more checkout lines and that there is a shortage of shopping carts in circulation. A red light on the screen highlights that it is time to restock the oatmeal rack’. To readers in Europe and North America, or even Australia and New Zealand, the above description would seem to be reflecting what we imagine is already common practice. We would believe, or are led to believe in text books, journal articles and magazines, that computer systems exist and are used that link sales, to stock records, and trigger orders based on preset re-order levels. Such systems are also meant to calculate stock turn and profit margin by line item, and can indicate the customer profile for a particular store. For example, the products being purchased in a particular store could suggest that most of the customers in that market area have young families, one pet animal, buy lower priced wine and will favour on special items. When combined with a loyalty card, where customers gain points for each purchase with a reward once a certain amount has been spent, the computer system could know more about individual households purchasing habits than will the customer themselves know. How many of us know, how much bread and milk we buy a week, or how much we spend on fruit a week?
