It is also making less off each shopper.
It was serious business, picking, with each shopper watching the other's "pulls" out of the corners of their eyes.
Whenever possible, Target assigns each shopper a unique code — known internally as the Guest ID number — that keeps tabs on everything they buy.
In the church thrift store where space is tight (and the clothes irresistible) I hid behind racks with my heart pounding as each shopper entered.
Merricks claimed the total damage caused to UK consumers could be as much as £19bn, equating to hundreds of pounds for each shopper.
The clothing site said it had attracted 28% more shoppers and increased the amount each shopper bought as it expanded in Europe and the US and extended its ranges in menswear, lingerie and plus-size womenswear.
The decision-making process, it turns out, is remarkably complicated because he has to build an algorithm, a personalized "value formula," that finds the sweet spot for each shopper.
As well as providing information about customer behaviour, the firm's software can also determine each shopper's sex, age range and ethnic group with an accuracy of around 80%, says Jeff Hershey of VideoMining.
As Pole's computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a "pregnancy prediction" score.
But with retailers dangling rock-bottom prices and consumers only biting at less expensive merchandise like small appliances and winter clothes, the average amount spent by each shopper declined from last year.
With stores dangling steep discounts and consumers worried about the economy, retail sales surged on the day after Thanksgiving, yet the amount of money each shopper spent fell, according to two reports released yesterday.
