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Of Charles Duhigg's Essay 'How Companies Learn Your Secrets'

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Every human being has habits, whether or not we are aware of them. In the essay “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” the author Charles Duhigg unveils how corporations use our pesky habits to predict our future purchases. The information Duhigg presents supports the idea that since habits involve a lower level of conscious thought, businesses can find an easy way to slip their products into the hands of habitual individuals by simply getting to know them. Personally, I find that I am not a susceptible target for the curious companies. As a poor college student, I am hardly participating in much shopping behavior. I only have the money to buy what I absolutely need, and when I do make a purchase I have to prevent risk. I stick with the products I have used before and that I know I can rely on. Duhigg would call this behavior habitual, and it is. It would take too much time to go over every product in every store before making a purchase. For example, I habitually shop at Safeway. When I need something, like yogurt, I automatically go to Safeway because I know …show more content…

Businesses like to take advantage of “some brief periods in a person’s life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux” (Duhigg 134). Ever since I have been responsible for my own purchases, I have purchased the same exact things from the same exact businesses, with some sparse variation. The only different products I buy are new ones, such as when I had to buy my own hand soap for the first time. The information that companies gather is meant to show when people are open to new products. Since I am stuck in my ways and I have little money for frivolous spending, they would gain practically nothing from knowing my habits. All they would learn is that I am a poor student that only has enough money to buy a few necessities. They can hardly make much money off of someone who has none to

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