Join the Nikon USA Club! - Data mining in the Before Times

[zane0777]

Found this product registration form from decades ago. They got pretty nosy - your occupation, income, ages of your children, housing situation, etc. Now they just spy on your online behaviors (and worse). I have no real point to make, just thought it was an interesting glimpse into the past.

 

[TenEleven]

As someone who worked in camera and product design for a large Japanese company - including making some supposedly "German" cameras.
I kind of see two sides to this. I do however agree that it certainly seems distasteful, if quaint by todays standards, if we see what they collect on us nowadays.

On one hand - yeah the marketing department absolutely got a copy of this - even in the "before times" and they likely had a field day with this kind of invasive data. I mean if I had the choice to give my personal data to Nikon or Mark Zuckerberg, I'd probably chose Nikon - by a very slim margin. (They might sell it on anyways!)

On the other hand, sometimes we'd actually learn something surprising from these kind of surveys and customer samples. For a example when we got data on a certain camera model being overwhelmingly popular with women, despite being originally designed as unisex and/or for guys - it was a big surprise.
This then led to some revisions for the second generation, namely making the case molding a bit smaller and making some buttons easier to reach if you have small(er) hands, something I am sure the (unintentional) target audience appreciated.

Edit: Oh and a certain colleague who shall not be named wanted to use this as an impetus to "cute-ify" and simplify the menus and styling of the camera. Something I and some others vehemently opposed, which led to some testy product meetings.

 

[JeffS7444]

Those sorts of "warranty cards" were once the norm for all manner of products. I'm not sure who actually processed them, but AFAIK, Nikon themselves didn't have a Colorado division. Some companies still urge their customers to register their products online, but unless there are perks for doing so (extended warranty, or notification in case of product recall, for example), why bother.

 

[DennisM]

Back in the day while in a marketing class in my MBA program I remember the professor remarking on the reason we were encouraged to mail back the cards enclosed with a new appliance or whatever. The reason he said was to help the company keep track of inventory. Presumably receipt of a card signaled that the vendor was depleting his inventory which assisted the manufacturer in planning his own scheduling and inventory control. Made sense to me in the days before the internet