I never met the manager or the corporate officers behind my local Walmart. They're effectively strangers, but they're allowed to film every moment of my visit to their store from the minute I turn into their parking lot. No one going to Walmart has an expectation of privacy and legally they *don't* have a right not to be filmed or photographed by strangers. You're just defining strangers as their fellow customers, while faceless corporate entities are... what?

In a world where interpersonal communication and personal reminders are increasingly visual due to the proliferation of cheap digital cameras and camera phones, people use photos to communicate and remember more things. You need to adapt to the wants and needs of the customers. If your merchandising designs are so amazing that they need to be jealously protected, give the customer some other options. Give them a photo card of the item they can take home. Put a barcode on it and have a terminal near the register where they can scan a handful of cards and send the collected photos to the e-mail address of their choice or get a custom URL with their wishlist on it.

And then you have the issue where they're taking the photo to prove you did something "not so smart" and any conflict with them is only going to help them look more heroic in exposing it while you, conversely, look less smart or more evil.

I know that the author was referencing a different scenario, but I thought this viewpoint would be valuable too.

AFAICT, it's not illegal to take photos in grocery stores. You are, however, on private property, and the store can prohibit the taking of photos. If you violate that policy, the store has the legal right to ask you to leave the premises. Some stores say they prohibit the photos to protect the privacy of their customers, some say it's to protect trade secrets, some say it's to prevent copyright infringement. All-in-all, it's to cover their butts, even if half of the time the photo benefits them, because they'd rather err on the side of caution.

According to this show many of these store spend a lot of time and money researching formats that promote more sales. For example having impulse buy items near the checkout. Or having sales items just inside the door.

When I was a TV salesman at Circuit City in '95, we comparison shopped the competition, and they comparison shopped us. With the salesmen at Good Guys and Fry's Electronics, we had a gentleman's agreement and didn't hassle each other. We'd just give each other a nod and a wave and try not to be too obvious about it. But Best Buy always tried to be jerks about it. It didn't stop us from getting the prices. It just made us be sneakier.

And what has it done for Best Buy? They've gotten bad press almost every year because they end up mistreating some average shopper and in general, the public considers that blue Best Buy uniform shirt to be a big sign flashing "I'm an idiot."