Briefs

By Laura Noonan, June 05 2008

IF knowledge is power then Dunhumby founder Clive Humby is a very powerful man indeed. Every year, the Londoner's data mining firm peers into a mind-boggling 100 million shopping baskets.

The contents of those baskets are sorted by codes, fed seamlessly into powerful spreadsheets and analysed by a team of dedicated number crunchers.

By the end, Dunhumby has an eerily complete picture of individual shoppers.

It knows their spending habits, their eating habits, their hair care preferences.

It can even isolate a 20- something's contradictory tendency to buy 10 chocolate bars and low-fat milk each week, and it can hone in on the ideological outlook of an organic devotee who buys Fair Trade products.

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