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Facing up to the Cost-of-Living Crisis, with Facial Recognition Technology
by Mark Etting, CEO of Supercorp Supermarket group
Australians are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. We know that our valued customers, like
all of us, are doing it tough.
So if there’s a piece of technology that will allow us to fight the cost of living and bring prices
down for all the mums and dads struggling out there, surely we should be using it! Facial
recognition technology is just such a piece of technology, so isn’t it time we embraced it?
How, you might wonder, could the adoption of Facial Recognition technology have such a
powerful effect on keeping prices low? As someone with years of experience in the
supermarket sector, I can assure you that one of biggest causes of high prices is shoplifting.
And what could be better than facial recognition technology to prevent shoplifting?
And it’s not just about shoplifting. Rates of violence towards retail workers have skyrocketed
lately. Bunnings reports that the rate of abuse, threats and assaults on their staff exploded by
50% in a year. We would all agree that we need to do whatever is necessary to protect retail
workers, since very often, these are young, vulnerable, low-paid staff, often in their first afterschool jobs. No parent wants their children to be put at risk, when they’re just doing their best
to earn a wage and create a good life for themselves. This technology would keep our young
workers safe.
Potential concerns about privacy are really quite misguided. For one thing, whatever the
conspiracy theorists would have you believe, shops aren’t creating giant, sinister, allencompassing databases of innocent shoppers’ private information. At Bunnings, for
example, data is stored for those who are responsible for the heinous attacks on young
vulnerable workers, but data collected from every genuine customer who walks through the
doors is processed and deleted almost immediately. So if you haven’t done anything wrong,
what are you afraid of?
Besides which, as we all know, most people aren’t genuinely concerned about their privacy
now anyway. This is clear from the fact that most young people tell me that they document
their every waking moment on social media – Even some moments that would in all honesty
probably be better left private. So it would be a bit hypocritical to create such a fuss about
having your photo taken when you’re at the supermarket. I can’t imagine what you’d be doing
in a supermarket that you’d be so ashamed of!
Despite what some media reporting would imply, most people actually really like this
technology. For example, a 2024 survey found that 68.8% of Australians were perfectly happy
to unlock their smartphones using facial recognition – exactly the same kind of technology as
we would like to introduce across our supermarkets.
And it’s hardly surprising people support this technology. As noted here in a blog about
happiness, we all like to be recognised, and to feel seen. This new technology means you’re
never just a faceless number when you come into one of our stores. We see you
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