Country Club Plaza And EVERYONE ELSE Tracks Your Phone

A recent tech tidbit continues our coverage of this town's top entertainment district and its ongoing foibles.

Here's a look at the service used on the Plaza that didn't really help them guard against a mob of rioters and looters back in 2020 . . .

“Placer.ai provides our teams with anonymous, aggregated insights, including data on traffic counts, on customer cross-shopping habits and information on where customers live.”

Placer, a startup, began in 2018. It now has 1,000 customers nationwide.

Actually . . .

Companies have been tracking mobile phones for more than a decade. Here's a basic article about the process . . .

We're Watching: Malls Track Shoppers' Cellphone Signals to Gather Marketing Data

Online retailers have long gathered behavioral metrics about how customers shop, tracking their movements through e-shopping pages and using data to make targeted offers based on user profiles.

Reality check . . . 

Grown-ups realize that mobile phones are nothing more than tracking devices which isn't such a horrible thing given that most don't go anywhere or do anything special.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Plaza owner hires company to track KC shoppers' phones, analyze foot traffic

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The owner of the Country Club Plaza has hired a technology company that uses shoppers' cell phone data to estimate foot traffic numbers. On Tuesday, it was obvious the nice weather with the pandemic winding down meant businesses were cashing in.