Tesco!

If you’ve been to the UK of late, you probably bought some groceries and/or ready-made food at Tesco.  This article from the Economist summarizes Tesco’s rise to power in the UK supermarket scene, thanks to their wonderful system for collecting data on shoppers.  They’re expanding into the US this year, which is the basis for the article, but this excerpt made me laugh:
“Some quirky correlations also pop out of the data. Take the fact that families buying baby wipes also buy more beer, mainly because fathers of young children have less time to go to the pub. Tesco’s response: mailing families with infants discount coupons for toys and beer.”

— devlocke