BudNet Tracks Your Suds

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is carrying a story about Budweiser's national internal sales tracking network called BudNET. It allows Anheuser-Busch to instantly track sales across the country, and 'If Anheuser-Busch loses shelf space in a store in Clarksville, Tennessee, they know it right away.' It brings up some interesting privacy issues, because according to the article 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.' Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."

Easy solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy Bud. It's industrial swill anyway.

Drink a good locally produced microbrew instead.

Just pay with cash

[javatips]

Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.

Just pay with cash and they'll never know it was you!

i think this

[2MuchC0ffeeMan]

I think this is a little more paranoia than we need.

If you bought directly from budweiser, they would know what you paid for, if it was cold, etc. So pipe down.

They can't really single out a person, or name a customer, there's no privacy issues here, at all. Just a company doing inventory control, to an extreme.

break out the tin foil hats.

[kasper37]

They aren't tracking YOU, they are tracking the beer. Unless I'm missing something, they have no way of connecting any one person with any one beer.

Irritating Paranioa

[e.m.rainey]

Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.

Then, don't buy bud!

BUDWEISER IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

BUDWEISER IS SHIT

Re:Quite frankly...

[leifm]

For real. And who cares the they data mine anyway, it's not like they're tracking any one individual's purchases.

Assumption

[The Clockwork Troll]

The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.

You mean like what supermarkets have been doing for years (except with more resolution)?

You know I've bought a lot of embarrassing things at the corner market and haven't even gotten discount coupons for them during check-out at a subsequent visit (a shame). And to the point, I've never gotten any kind of marketing material from Trojans in the mail as a result of having bought ribbed at Safeway, so if someone's correlating my personal information with my condom-purchasing history, they're not being very enterprising (if they were, they'd have sold the information to my wife long ago).

What I'm saying is, there's a tacit assumption in the article that somehow your purchases are correlated with your name. That's more likely to be happening at your credit card company's clearinghouse than at the cashier's station.

Give me a Break!

[Anonymous Coward]

You consider this a violation of your privacy? You'd don't even own that beer until the transaction is complete. They are basically tracking something the *store owner* owns, which is no business of yours.

FLASH: Slashdot editor an idiot!

[BillFarber]

Privacy issues because they track their own sales?

Paranoid Much?

[khrustalicious]

This has about as much to do with security as...well...nothing. They don't track anything about -you-. It's a clever and quick way to track product info at a store level. They're not getting anything that some guy with a clipboard couldn't get. They're just doing it much more intelligently. Not EVERY technical innovation in marketing = big brother.

Overreacting

[pwackerly]

Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."

They don't know when you buy your Bud, just when Bud is bought!

Abuse of "Your Rights Online"

[pridkett]

I'm a little confused as this isn't really your rights online and anyone that think that it is obviously didn't read the article. This is just and article talking about the information system that Bud uses to track sales of their products. It's a supply chain thing. They're not doing anything devious to go about this, just having people track prices and sales and actually doing something with data.

Anyone can tell you that beer distribution is complicated [mit.edu], this just helps them better their distribution. Take off the tinfoil hats, nothing to see here.

Demographic data mining isn't bad.

[pcx]

• 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.' Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."

Not you -- SOMEONE Yes Bud knows when someone purchased their product but they don't know who and unless they have a survey team out, they don't know why. Stuff like this happens all the time and for the most part it tends to make life better for all of us.

Where we have to worry is when a company starts mining all this data and does track it back to an individual person. When a credit card company or polititical/religious/charity organization can pick up the phone and find out what I watched for TV last night and what books I last bought or checked out at the library, that's when we need to be concerned.

And even if personal data-mining is possible it's no guarantee it will be used. For example, the EZ-TAG scanners on the toll roads you take can easilly compute your average speed between toll booths and issue you a speeding ticket if you were speeding but they don't. Why? Because the toll road comissioners would be voted out of office if they allowed that.

Oh come on...

[bob670]

"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands"

I think we may have taken the fight for privacy to a new and illogical low? No wonder people lump tech geeks in with the tin foil hat crowd.

*sigh*

[jrwillis]

For the love of God people, I'm as much of a privacy advocate as the next man, but MAYBE it's time to take the tinfoil hat off. Why on earth would you care if Budweiser knows when and where bottle #564,356 is sold? It just sounds like good business to me. Besides, it's not like they're doing it for real beer like Guinness or anything. :-)

Re:Have we forgotten the lessons of our youth?

[Aardpig]

If you don't want them tracking your name, then get your friend's older brother to loan you his ID, or hang around outside the store asking if someone will just pick you up a case.

On this note, why is the legal drinking age in the USA so much higher than it is in Europe (typically, 21 vs 18)? My own personal hypothesis is that the need for cars to get to/from bars in the USA (due to their spread-out nature) means that DUI problems would skyrocket if the drinking age were lowered to 18. Anyone else have some suggestions?

Re:i think this

[PeelBoy]

Exactly..

"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."

And how would they know when you purchased other brands?

Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

So they know how much beer they are selling in specific locations and whether or not people prefer it cold or warm. No big deal. Most people on /. buy things from the internet, guess what those suppliers know a heck of a lot more about you and what you buy. Dell sells direct, so they know exactly who they sell what to... I could go on and on but you get the point.

Re:Just pay with cash

[mblase]

Even if you pay with a credit card, BudNet isn't concerned about you personally. Their system tracks beer purchases by location, and cross-references it to demographics known to live there.

So they don't care if John Q. Slashdotter is buying Bud or Bud Light, individually speaking. They only care if blue-collar Caucasians or white-collar African-Americans or gay males or straight females or college undergrads or senior citizens are buying it, and where, and for what price. That information is all their marketing department needs to know to tailor their ads.

Re:Abuse of "Your Rights Online"

[stratjakt]

No kidding.. "Frankly I don't want Budweiser to know when I buy their beer!"

I mean, frankly, Budweiser doesnt give a shit about the individuals who buy beer... They give a shit that Coors is outselling them by a wide margin in east Cincinnati, and they might want to know "How can we better appeal to Linux zealots?"

But tracking individual beer drinking habits? For what purpose? That's just pissing away resources..

Slashbots should take off the tinfoil hats and appreciate this for the cool and complex data-mining system that it is.

Re:i think this

[Eagle5596]

I personally agree, the end comment on the story:

Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.

Is just classic slashdot overreaction. I swear, if there were an article talking about medical records, some slashdotter, or even an editor more likely, would post the comment "Frankly, I don't want my doctor to know my current medical conditions."

It's ridiculous people. Yes, privacy is important, but only in certain areas. Budwiser has just got an extremely good system for controlling where they send products, what they sell them for, and which companies are competing with them, and how well the competition is going.

It's not like Bud is handing over your drinking habits to the US gov't, and the US gov't upon seeing a southerner switch to a light beer declaring "ARGH! He must be a terrorist! I bet he stopped watching NASCAR too!"

Bud is just managing their stock, and trying to determine how the market truly feels about their product, and the prices they charge. It's all about managing their stock of beer, and where they will advertise.

Please, leave your tin foil hats at home before you post.

I have a serious question..

[Krashed]

Who cares?
Every company tries to track their sales so they have a better idea where the advertising dollars should be spent. That boils down to more profits for them and better prices for you. Amazon.com does the same thing and so does every other retailer, wholesaler, distributor, manufactor, and website out there. So what if there is a name for BudNET? Every major retailer does it.
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands." Frankly, you need to live back before computers were around cause now EVERYTHING is tracked. They used to use pens and paper but now it is thrown in a database. I can go to work right now and, with the right information, pull up everything you have purchased there. At the end of the day, our computers process that information and break down what people are buying, when, why, how much, what accessories they get for that item, and then display it in easy to read charts of what we could do to improve our sales. The next day, we know what to push to maximize our margins.

Re:Wow you're right!

[Suicyco]

I drink beer, I love beer. I love beer so much that I cannot drink bud, because I like to drink BEER.

Thats not snotty IMO, Bud is just crappy "beer". I suppose its a cheap alcohol delivery mechanism, but beer its not.

This is getting rediculous

[AKAImBatman]

This whole idea of anonymity is getting out of hand. Guess what? Anonymity never existed and has never been protected by any government. The idea of being anonymous came out of people getting lost in the industrial culture. Before the industrial age, you tended to have few choices on who to buy from, and the store owner knew you and what you bought. He didn't carry anything that you didn't want people to know you bought, because it would soon be getting around if you did buy it. Now we're using computers to pull that all back together, but mostly for the old advantages of knowing how to serve the customer better. Budweiser is not really interested in gossiping with others that you bought a keg, so what's the big deal already?

I know people like the idea of having a protective shroud of mystery surrounding them. I hate to break it to you, but it's just a false sense of security. If you do something worth noticing, you *will* get noticed.

You're Bitching About Opt-In?!

[Vagary]

So?! That's totally within their rights! At least companies are putting a price on your privacy and offering you the choice of selling it for that price rather than just trying to take it.

And who knows, there could be other benefits for selling your privacy -- the (government-owned) liquor stores in Ontario are currently asking every customer for their postal code, presumably so they can figure out where to build more stores and save customers travel time.

Re:Just pay with cash

[Eric Savage]

Isn't this what privacy concerned people have been saying for ages?

"If you are going to profit of my information at least share some of the fruits with me"

Umm.... and how are they getting this info?

[Guspaz]

If I pick up a 6-pack at the local depaneur (7-11, corner store, etc) and pay cash, and the clerk prints out a cheap receipt on a cheap non-networked cash register, Budweiser will STILL know who I am, and if my bear was chilled or warm?

What, do they have a secret network of x-ray thermal spy sats that record all purchases of their product?

This whole article is overblown and exagerated. Not to mention it doesn't apply to many (most?) stores. At least around here. I don't know of too many corner stores around here that ask for your personal info when you buy beer.

Re:Just pay with cash

[Eudial]

Use a phony name and ssn when getting the card in the first place?

Re:Demographic data mining isn't bad.

[stevesliva]

Where we have to worry is when a company starts mining all this data and does track it back to an individual person. When a credit card company or polititical/religious/charity organization can pick up the phone and find out what I watched for TV last night and what books I last bought or checked out at the library, that's when we need to be concerned.

I always find it amazing what leaps of inference they will make with what they can find out. Here in Vermont, we don't have voter registration, but I keep getting mailings from the GOP. Why? Because I subscribe to US News and World Report and that's supposedly more conservative than Time or Newsweek. Also prone to this assumption are Veterans groups-- thanks for all the return address labels, guys!

Re:Begs the Question...

[WebMasterJoe]

Something tells me that if people were to actually expand their horizons on the beer front, they would discover the Sierra Nevadas, Shiners and such that have nationwide markets and comprable pricing to Bud ($9 a 12-er compared to $11 a 12-er for Shiner).

Who cares if the beer even has national distribution? Around upstate NY, you can get Saranac, Ommegang, Magic Hat, Wachussettes, or tons of other great beers. I'm sure other parts of the country have similar good small breweries. And these breweries know that they have to sell you a better beer if you're going to buy it, so they're almost always better than A-B or SAB beers.

BUD FUD

[telstar]

Man, some people really need to relax.

Guess what ... You know that broadband bill you pay? There's a company keeping VAST logs of every hit through their servers that you make. I'd worry about that before I worried about somebody making sure there's beer on the shelf when I go shopping.

How to foil those supermarket cards, or have fun

[Anonymous Coward]

First I'll mention Publix, who advertises that they give you the sale with out a card!

When I don't shop at Publix (usually 3:30am or something) I apply for a new card everytime I buy something. Some stores make this easy by allowing you to pick up a form, check a box indicating you don't want to tell them anything, and hand it over. Others require you to fill out bogus info, in which case I bug the cashier, and they usually have one handy to swipe. You can always use the person in line behind you or if all else fails, fill out the form, with bogus info of course.

I also make sure to ask the employee to tell their supervisor how unhappy I am with the supermarket for doing this.

If more people would get a new card every time, the stores would stop doing this because of the expense of making the cards.

If the store wants to track my purchases, they can do it the old fashined way, via my credit card!

(I beleive publix only exists in the south eastern US)

Excuse me, but...

[applemasker]

Exactly what are people railing against here? What legitimate expectation of privacy do you have in the fact that a purchase was made of Bud at a particular time and place, at a specific price? It doesn't even attempt to track who bought the product.

It's not like they're putting RFID's in the cans/bottles and finding out how long it took you to polish off the six-pack you bought on Tuesday night.

In fact, as far as I can see, the data is not purchaser-specific and is focused more on the retail outlet's presentation of Bud with respect to other brands. So, who cares? If it focuses their marketing, let it.

But American Budweiser is piss any way

[Moderation abuser]

It's almost completely tasteless. All that fresh beer tastes better *bollocks*. Why on earth would you choose that in favour of a decent beer, like the original Czech Budweiser.

http://www.budvar.cz/

Re:Umm.... and how are they getting this info?

[travisbecker]

From the article:

This data, crossed with U.S. Census figures on the ethnic and economic makeup of neighborhoods, also helps Anheuser tailor marketing campaigns with a local precision only dreamed of a few years ago.

The original poster overstated it. AB is taking sales and store info from the store and mixing that with general Census data. The article doesn't say anything about matching a particular person (name, age, gender, etc.) with their buying patterns. So I don't think the article is overblown at all.

Travis

All About You!

[telstar]

It always amazes me that it's the same people that scream and shout about privacy issues that come to websites like this one and continually post responses and journal entries about their stance on issues of political, corporate, and other signifigance. If you think somebody could build a profile about you based on the beer you drink, imagine the profile they could construct by piecing together every post you've ever made to websites on the Internet.

Re:Quite frankly...

[infochuck]

For real. And who cares the they data mine anyway, it's not like they're tracking any one individual's purchases.

Don't want 'em to know who you are? Pay in cash.

Re:Wow you're right!

[stevesliva]

Better to crap on the beer than the people drinking it. That's what's snotty. I think Bud is crap, but I won't assume you're trash just for drinking it. Or endorsing it and winning the Daytona 500... (Likewise, disliking NASCAR is just fine, but implying everyone who likes it is dumb-as-nails is snotty)

Re:Easy solution!

[Haxwell]

Are you guys really concerned about this BudNet? Who cares if Budweiser is able to tell so much about their customer base.. they can't tell that you bought a beer at 10 PM on Tuesday or whatever. If they could, then yeah thats a problem, but just because they know that their consumers in Area Y are College Educated and like to buy warm beer on Tuesdays, who cares?

why care? may be a better question..

Hax.

Re:Easy solution!

[dswensen]

Unfortunately, I don't think Amazon sells beer.

Re:I'd be more concerned . . .

[benedict]

Free as in beer;
Free as in speech;
Free as in first hit of crack.

OMG - think of the privacy implications

[esobofh]

I can't beleive they would be tracking my beer purchases!! those bastards.. think of what might happen.. they might make beer cheaper, or more available or cold when i want it that way.. son of a.. @#%#@^

can you say paranoid?? They may be the first beer company to track sales as they happen, but they are certainly not the first industry.. this happens everyday.. you better not buy anything ever again!!

Re:Wow you're right!

[Hrothgar The Great]

Well I'm not going argue with your personal taste, because it's a purely subjective matter, and I used to not like cheap beer either, but I do disagree that there is "nothing pleasant about the taste" of Budweiser and so forth. It tastes like beer. Sometimes that's all you want.

Re:Wow you're right!

[Suicyco]

Taste is purely subjective, I agree. However, thats like calling me a snob because I think cheap ground beef isn't the same quality as prime rib. Bud is very popular, however that doesn't change its brewing practices or its ingredients, which are decidedly inferior.

I guess it is being a little arrogant, if people really like bud than so be it. I do know people who think "good beer" is disgusting. I usually generalize the meaning of "good" to be quality ingredients and a decent brewing process. Whether or not the recipe is to your liking, at least it was made properly. Bud is factory spewed and made with crappy grain (rice waste products are included to steady the process and make it cheaper.)

Oh well :-)

Idiocy .. why not comment on the tech?

[DigitalDreg]

I think it's a great application of data collection and data mining. They are collecting a load of data, some of it automated, some of it gathered by humans, integrating it, and using it to drive their supply chain. Isn't this a good use of IT?

The article is in the wrong category and is misleading, as numerous other people have pointed out.

Why not resubmit with a different category and talk about the novel aspects, like taking what the delivery guys observe about other items on the shelf and the clientelle, and how that gets fed all the way up to marketing plans? That's the real jewel of the article ...

The Privacy Police Strike Again

[ReadParse]

This privacy stuff is getting out of hand...

It brings up some interesting privacy issues, because according to the article 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.'

It does NOT bring up any privacy issues, interesting or not. It's marketing data and there's no personal connection to the consumer whatsoever. Budweiser has a business obligation to determine where and how their product is selling.

Just because they say "you" in the text doesn't mean that "you" are part of the data collected. They're just using a purchase that sounds familiar to "you" to give "you" a frame of reference.

I'm surprised none of the privacy nuts have muttered the words "Ashcroft" or "Bush" in this thread yet, for no good reason, as is usually the case.

RP

Re:Quite frankly...

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't tracking YOUR purchase, they are tracking sales product wise, and this is by far not the first system to do that. There are no privacy issues related to this story AT ALL.

as a former Stlouisian...

[Chuck Bucket]

After growing up in St. Louis, I practically grew up on AB beers. once I moved away I started drinking brewpub beers, and then started home brewing myself. after that I had a sense and appreciation for good beer, and now the only time I drink Bud is if I'm visiting STL. it's like drinking water now; you can't taste the hops or anything like you can in a good/well made beer.

P

Re:i think this

[msoftsucks]

I guess you haven't read the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II. If Ashcroft wants to know how much beer you have bought, or what groceries you've bought, he doesn't have much difficulty. This may sound innoculous, but it can spiral into something sinister very easy. Lets just say that Ashcroft considers you an enemy (being just a liberal or black qualifies you). Lets say certain groceries can be used to make a bomb (cleaning solutions, fertilizer, lye etc.) All Ashcroft has to do is to use the Patriot act to get your grocery shopping, and sees that you've recently bought alot of these products. He tags you as a terrorist, and hauls you off to one of the those "material witness" or "enemy combatant" jail cells for the rest of your life. You are not allowed a lawyer or a trial, your family doesn't know where you are and can't see you. Do you think that this can't happen? All of the legal protections preventing this from occuring have been removed. Its only a mater of time before this occurs.

If you think that this nightmare situation can't occur, then you haven't read your history. Just look at Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Kim Jong Ils' North Korea, Sadaam's Iraq, the Soviet Union and today's China. Each of these countries spied on their citizens in order to capture those who would "subvert the state". The Patriot act and other legislation of its ilk are no different than the rules that the each of these countries passed. In fact, even the reason as to why they were enacted is the same (to protect the state).

So, will you be the poor slob who gets thrown into a jail cell, because you didn't protect your privacy?

Re:Quite frankly.. - Why so Paranoid??

[lcsjk]

The local public utility has been tracking my water usage for years -- and they make me pay them to do it!! Worse than that, the long distance phone company not only tracks my phone calls, but they even track who I call and how long I am on the phone. My grocery store tries to track my grocery buying, but nobody lives at that address. However, Walmart does not have those stupid "shopper cards", so I shop there. Heck, I even think /. even keeps a record of when I respond and what I respond to.
You can't hide!

WTF? Who Cares?

[Drawsalot]

Are we being overly paranoid here... Unless they are checking and recording ID's at the door to gain Individual buying habits, I don't think this is intrusive, just good business sense. It would seem to me this is why, among other reasons, AB is number one. Inventory control SHOULD be a high priority. Beer, with a definite shelf life, is one business where this would be a benefit to the consumer.

Re:A public DARE!!

[C.Batt]

Using VISA to buy your beer leaves more of a trail.

If I wanted to "out" a public figure, I'd go after their credit card statements, their "air miles", and their debit transaction statements. Then I'd correlate it with video surveillance data from the locations that the purchases were made. The last place I'd go was BudNET.

Good freaking grief.

Re:Quite frankly...

[GrendelT]

"Privacy issues", HA!

Some slashdotters are overly paranoid. Sales-tracking is not about what YOU buy. It's about their product and how it sales.
Take the tin-foil off your head and relax.

Re:Quite frankly...

[leifm]

That brings up something I've oft wondered about the more privacy paranoid in the /. crowd. I bet most of us here heavily use debit cards, I know I do, and my bank is sitting on a moutain of data that they could probably make a killing selling to virtually any commercial venture. Are bank privacy policies really solid, is there a federal bank privacy law? I don't hear anyone's paranoid ranting being directed at banks.

Then you have grocer savings cards, I do hear a bit of complaining about those, but nothing near say RFID. Those are personally identifiable as far as I can tell.

Who in god's name drinks BUD by choice?

[Lodragandraoidh]

With all of the microbrews floating around out there - why would anyone choose to drink Budweiser?

Re:Quite frankly...

[leifm]

I'm not doing that because I don't have a problem with aggregate data collection. If my bank wants to sell data to Phillip Morris that leads to the conclusion that most male smokers between 18-30 spend an average of x on ciggarettes in a given week, and my data is part of that I don't care. If they (my bank) post a website with my name, contact info, and what I purchased for how much and when, then I have an issue.

My question is simply why don't you hear complaining about the data banks have access to, yet you hear complaints about something like RFID, which is unlikely to ever be used outside of supply chain and inventory management functions (I'd guess it'll be part of the disposable packaging rather than integrated into the product, or maybe even removable at checkout for reuse). For all the bitching you'd think they were proposing GPS beacons being physically attached to every product.

Micro brews and Anheuser-Busch

[robjob]

By the way, for all the beer snobs out there (and I consider myself one of them) Anheuser-Busch is the worlds largest contract-brewer. Lots of mid-size brewersuse them to be able to produce and bottle large amounts of beer and then get that beer in the distribution chain. Sam Adams? for a long time more than 50% of all SA in the market was contract brewed by Anheuser-Busch (Miller Brewing now has the contract).

Yes, Anheuser-Busch produces bland beer. But form a beer making perspective, they are absolutely the best at being able to produce any kind of beer in the world and to do it well.

Re:it's crappy by european standards, sure

[Poppageorgio]

Hell, I hate to admit it, but I like Bud. And I also like Black and Tans. I used to drink Amstel, but for the past couple of years, you can't seem to get a good bottle. My favorite bottled beer is Red Stripe. I also like the local microbreweries. What does this mean? ABSOLUTLY NOTHING! Different people like different things at different times. Bud is for daytime drinking on the weekends (boat or beach), micros for happy hour, and different beers for the house. Why is somebody "not cool" for drinking one of the most popular beers on the market? Are you really that "1337"? Get over yourself.