I buy the number of shoes per year that I'm going to buy and I'm going to buy them first based on a value calculation that considers things like their price and my expectation of their longevity and secondly based on whether or not I'm contributing to business practices that externalize costs of my purchase to others. I will forever opt out and unsubscribe from anything I can, and furiously report spam for the remainder.

Who are these people that, having bought some sneakers already, get a email about other sneakers into their nearly bottomless inbox full of junk (presumedly, given they don't avoid these kinds of marketing messages) will actually notice it amongst the noise and then actually be compelled to buy additional shoes they wouldn't have otherwise (and therefore apparently didn't need)? Certainly they exist in some number, because they show up in optimization dashboards I've built for my clients, but what portion of the market are they, truly? Is this reflective of a psychological disorder (perhaps the underlying cause of "hoarding" is a spectrum-type pathology)? Is optimizing for these customers's odd (and apparently self destructive) behavior the same thing as optimizing revenue in the total market or is it just a local optima that everyone's in a big hurry to to corner themselves in? Even if it was a true global optimum, is it ethical? Is this the microtransaction whale-hunt optimization race to the bottom that mobile games went through (and results in many such as myself avoiding participation in that market) in slow motion due to physical goods' slower cycles?

>Who are these people that, having bought some sneakers already, get a email about other sneakers into their nearly bottomless inbox full of junk (presumedly, given they don't avoid these kinds of marketing messages) will actually notice it amongst the noise and then actually be compelled to buy additional shoes they wouldn't have otherwise

They exist, I just think it's stupid to build your business around them.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/sothebys-sells-sneaker-colle...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSGN0Er18E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9_tB1tzT4

https://www.sacbee.com/sports/nba/sacramento-kings/article23...

I would say runners might be in this category. I often get emails from Altra, RunningWarehouse and a host of other shoe companies and I will open them up and take a look. I think it was about a month ago that I received an email from RunningWarehouse about some shoes I hadn't thought of at a good deal and I went ahead and bought them even though I didn't need another pair. Another time about 3 months ago Altra sent over a email about a special edition pair which again didn't need already have 5 pairs of shoes but I bought them anyway.

The reason I go through and buy them is because I know I will eventually need another pair and I would much rather buy a pair on sale then need a pair and have to pay more.

your question is whether there are people who might be prompted to buy fashion items based on advertisements?

this seems like an obviously true thing. i would estimate that the majority of clothes retail is absolutely _not_ utilitarian: it isn't driven by sentiments like "my old shoes have worn out so i need new ones", but rather by ones like "i think those shoes look good and so i would like to own them as well as the ones i already have".

How is making it seem like the data is mandatory any better than it actually being mandatory? I will probably bounce as a customer either way before actually in detail investigating the huge form I was presented and buy from an online competitor or from a physical store.

And maybe I am an odd customer, but I also think that the customer who buys more sneakers just due to a spammy newsletter is too.

Edit: Online casinos here in Sweden recently went through a revolution where they added e-ID login (meaning that users do not need to complete a huge form on signup) and automatic withdrawal on logging out when possible. Sure, they were lucky that they could get almost all of the old data they gathered by using the e-ID, but even if they had not been able to I think it still would have been worth it to collect less data to get more sales. And apparently slowing down withdrawals was bad for business (who could have known!) despite making some gamblers lose their money while waiting for the withdrawal to be approved. Customer hostile greedy strategies can trap you in a local optima.

Your suggestions are what give that icky feeling. It's creepy. People don't like creepy. You are losing costumers.

Is your spelling of "customers" as "costumers" intentional? It feels like some inside joke I am missing.

It was a swypo I thought was funny so I left it because it fit. The joke was only in my head, but I really love when the autocorrections pick something insightful.