> It used to be totally fine for one shopkeeper to mention to another that he saw a customer looking for a particular item. When you do it at scale, the old rules don't apply.
The on-line equivalent of that would be e-commerce sites sharing their detailed analytics data with each other. What was described in the article is more alike to a shopkeeper saying to another, "Did you see that woman in red scarf? Her name is Jane Doe, she lives in the house over that hill. She seems to be interested in this particular item, so your best bet is to upsell her something similar."
"She's just received a big payout from her ex-husband so she'll be willing to pay more, and she likes cats, especially white ones. Also her sister's birthday is coming up and the sister is obsessed with horse racing so you might be able to sell her some memorabilia. Jack up the price so she'll think it's valuable."
The on-line equivalent of that would be e-commerce sites sharing their detailed analytics data with each other. What was described in the article is more alike to a shopkeeper saying to another, "Did you see that woman in red scarf? Her name is Jane Doe, she lives in the house over that hill. She seems to be interested in this particular item, so your best bet is to upsell her something similar."