Amazon Will Pay Consumers Who Share Their Shopping Habits

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) already collects massive amounts of data on how people shop on its website, but what consumers are buying away from the site remains opaque to the e-commerce giant. To gain more insight into what shoppers are purchasing elsewhere, Amazon is offering to pay consumers to upload to its data-crunching computers the receipts for their purchases at supermarkets, drugstores, restaurants, and department stores. Amazon says the purpose of the Amazon Shopper Panel, as the program is called, is to help brands on its platform offer better products and to make Amazon's ads more relevant, yet it also gives the retailer valuable insights into consumer shopping habits that until now have been closed off to it.