The move into the Age of Analytics is going to produce plenty of creepy, shudder-inducing moments along the way. The latest? It’s a story that illustrates how big analytics-enabled enterprises can divine highly private details about us just by analyzing mega amounts of data and looking for patterns.

Case in point:  A father observed that his high school-age daughter suddenly started getting baby clothing coupons in the mail from Target. He went to the local store and protested, saying that this was an obvious and highly offensive mistake.

When the store manager called the man a few days later to apologize, the father apologized to the store manager; his daughter was in fact pregnant, and due that August. In fact, we infer from the story that the highly targeted Target ads were what caused the daughter to come clean to her dad and admit she had a bun in the oven. (Read more below…)

This story shows just how powerful enterprise analytics have become. Combining purchase records with widely available data from third parties (demographics, for example), it’s possible for companies to build highly detailed profiles of customer groups and individual customers. Once you have these profiles and enough data, the next step is using it to anticipate future needs or behavior.

Not surprisingly, humans are creatures of habit. Many of our actions become almost automated once a pattern has been established. We have a set group of routines that cover activities like getting ready for the day or driving to work. During these activities, our brains are on autopilot, freeing up our mental capacity to think about other, more important issues – or simply conserving effort.

Experiments with rats have shown how these routines become ingrained and form a ‘loop’ of automatic behavior. When placed in a maze with hidden food for the first time, the rats’ brains are working hard to find the source of the food smell.

Over time, after the rats learn to solve the maze, the mental activity followed a specific pattern: a spike when a rat is first placed in the now-familiar maze, then little or no thought while navigating, then another burst of activity when the rat finds the food reward. A loop consisting of a ‘Cue’, ‘Behavior’, and resulting ‘Reward’ is now stored away in the rat brain, ready to be used again in the next maze-like situation.

Humans have these loops too, and they extend to almost every activity we conduct – including shopping. We tend to shop at the same stores for food and a different set of stores for hardware or electronics, and in each place we follow the same processes. It’s very difficult for outside parties to change these patterns once they’re ingrained.

Target (and others, I’m sure) have found that there are a few times in people’s lives when these shopping patterns change – usually corresponding to major milestones. And what’s a more significant milestone than having a baby? The parents’ situation completely changes; they’re suddenly looking for an entirely new set of products to address completely different needs.

Because it’s a major inflection point, it’s very much in retailers’ best interests to engage with the mother-to-be at the earliest moment possible.  How early is “early?” By sifting through the data, Target knows what pregnant women are buying at the beginning of the second trimester.

For more details on the research behind behavioral loops and how Target can reliably figure out if your daughter (or wife, or sister, or girlfriend) is pregnant, take a look at this NYT article. The science is fascinating, and the implications immense for those of us interested in where Big Data is headed. After all, each of us is a tiny data point in databases everywhere. Oh – and if a significant female in your life suddenly switches from scented to unscented moisturizing lotion, start paying very, very close attention.