Predicting the Next 5 Years in Retail

2. Sex with data. Retailers have been "fooling around" with data for several years now, but moving forward they're going to have to take the next step and have sex with data, Joel said. They need to become intimate with their data. Retailers must integrate their linear siloed data with their cyclical siloed data to create a universal customer database. Joel referenced Amazon's Price Check, which has been the focus of much controversy, as being scary for retailers because it displays just how much data Amazon has collected. This has been made possible through Amazon's infrastructure, which stresses feedback (e.g., ratings and reviews) from its customers.