As Jonathan Webb –co-founder with Richard Savage of Retail In Action— admits, his company operates in a “grey area” where the frontier between market research and possibly illegal intrusion into privacy is blurred.

Its employees pose as customers in supermarket or large stores while carrying secret cameras (some having offset swivel lenses to shoot from the hip) to record how real customer behave in a store. Students who are employed to do the work are warned in the training documents they receive that “We take pictures “discretely” which means we do not ask permission. Therefore one needs to be aware of store staff and security who might ask you to stop.”

Once the spies have taken the images, Retail in Action works with an ad company to produce, analyse and sell the information to companies. The result, dubbed “ideas book”, should turn the evidence gained from the film surveillance into “executable, action-oriented recommendations” for improving a company’s marketing.

As the competition on the high street has intensified, retail groups have become keener to find out what their rival are up to.

A major supermarket chain, Somerfield, commissions Retail in Action to do store audits of its competitors across the UK each month. Then Somerfield can either spoil the concurrence strategies or outcompete them in the fight for the attention of the customers.

Savage and Webb will also use the photography to cold-call high-street chains and their suppliers offering an analysis of their marketing and providing the pictures as evidence. Mothercare, a baby clothing group, accepted their package of covert pictures snooping on Christmas promotional campaigns run by similar companies in New York.

They also propose to monitor a company’s staff performance in restocking shelves.

The article reminds that Britain has no privacy law, although the Human Right Act recognises a right to privacy and other legal statutes –such as the Data Protection Act– protect the privacy of the individuals.

The law can allow covert filming in the name of public interest or security (CCTV cameras.)

But here we are talking about intruding on a person’s privacy for commercial gain. And even if Retail in Action operates in semi-public places, “A telling thing is that they are doing this covertly. I would not be surprised if people felt they had a right to complain and (…) if that was upheld in court”, says Myles Jelf, expert in privacy law.

From The Sunday Times (reg.req.), edition of July 11, 2004, “Special Report: Smile — you’re on covert camera”.