SECRETLY FILMED AS YOU SHOP

EXPOSED: Britain’s biggest stores use cameras on shelves to ‘manipulate’ customers into spending more

SHOPPERS have been secretly filmed by big stores to try to make them spend more.

Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury’s and Co-op all commissioned SBXL, a little- known behavioural analysis agency, to record customers in their aisles. SBXL boasts it can use the footage to ‘manipulate’ the emotions and behaviour of shoppers – and raise takings. The firm, which has also worked with L’Oreal, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Danone and Kellogg’s, said adequate signage was in place and consent was sought from customers.

However, the Information Commissioner’s Office said last night that it would examine the Daily Mail’s findings to check for breaches of data protection laws.

Our undercover investigation also revealed that:

Tesco’s sales apparently rose £106million in the 12 months after it

commissioned SBXL to increase sales of treats for pets;

Boots allowed the firm to use cameras to analyse how women apply make-up;

Multinationals are using arms-length agencies for similar sales techniques to avoid breaching data laws;

YouTube videos on SBXL’s public channel showed unsuspecting customers in B&Q, supermarkets and duty-free outlets;

Footage which included children remained on the channel for eight years.

Some of the stores whose customers were filmed by SBXL also claim that appropriate signage was in place, or consent sought. However none has provided evidence to prove this.

Andy Bromley, the firm’s sales chief, showed a Mail undercover reporter footage taken in UK shops, telling her: ‘These people don’t know they’re being filmed.’

This is despite SBXL later insisting it had not carried out covert recording.

‘The Daily Mail’s investigation has highlighted concerns about the use of CCTV’, said Steve Eckersley, the ICO’s director of investigations. ‘We will be examining the material provided and making appropriate enquiries.’

SBXL was called in by Mars, the confectionery giant which also owns Whiskas and Pedigree Chum, to work with Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s to sell more pet food.

It recommended exploiting the ‘guilt’ owners felt about their pets by putting cute pictures of puppies and kittens next to treats. This resulted in a 15 per cent increase in sales, worth £106million at Tesco and £20million at Asda over a year, according to Mr Bromley.

He said Boots was a major client, and SBXL worked with the chain seven or eight times in 2018, including on sales for its Soap and Glory range. Mondelez International, formerly Kraft, commissioned SBXL to ‘pump the smell of chocolate’ into a British convenience store, increasing Cadbury’s sales by 4 per cent.

Among the footage on SBXL’s YouTube channel – put there in apparent violation of the law – was a woman browsing the cheese aisle in Sainsbury’s, a close-up of an Asda shopper yawning in a magazine aisle and a man anxiously consulting his shopping list by the coffee shelves in Tesco.

Some of the videos were viewed hundreds of times and remained on the social media site for up to eight years. Several included images of children.

The SBXL channel even featured a ‘Christmas Special bloopers’ montage of CCTV footage to the Benny Hill theme tune, showing shoppers dropping products and struggling with baskets in a supermarket pharmacy. Silkie Carlo, of the campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘This shocking exposé reveals an unbelievable level of disrespect for loyal customers and an apparently alarming disregard for privacy laws.

‘The fact that this footage of shoppers has even ended up being publicly broadcast on YouTube is outrageous. Customers should be treated with respect, but here they have been treated as guinea pigs in behavioural experiments.’

A spokesman for Privacy International, a charity, said: ‘ There are some serious questions to be answered in relation to the legality of these actions conducted without the express consent of the individual. We are particularly worried that this is only a first step to even more invasive practices.’

A spokesman for SBXL said it had ‘never carried out covert recording of customers in stores’ with research ‘only ever carried out with the full co-operation from the public involved’. She said the YouTube videos showed shoppers ‘who were aware that they were being filmed for the purposes of market research, however, we recognise that the content should not have been posted on social media’.

Boots said ‘ clear signage was placed directly next to the display and at store entrances to inform customers that filming was taking place for market research purposes’. But it said it gave no permission for footage to go on YouTube. ‘We’ve been let down by SBXL and will not be working with them again,’ it said.

An Asda spokesman said: ‘We have no relationship with SBXL nor gave any permission for footage from our stores to be posted online. We can reassure our customers that we always handle the privacy of their information with utmost care.’

Tesco said it ‘does not covertly film customers in stores nor would we allow any other company to do so’ and that it worked with SBXL once in 2011 and customers gave permission to be interviewed.

Sainsbury’s said: ‘We do not work with this company and have never had a direct relationship with them.’ It said SBXL had assured it that all data captured in Sainsbury’s stores had been deleted.

A Co- Op spokesman said that when SBXL filmed in its stores, ‘ both times clear customer signage was in place’. Mondelez International and Nestle said they were investigating.

World Duty Free, Coca-Cola, Mars, Kellogg’s, B&Q and Danone representatives all said they had not worked with SBXL for some years.

L’Oreal said it had no record of working with the firm within the past five years.