In the modern age, most of our purchases are tracked by apps, smart home devices like Alexa, and social media, to name a few.

Prior to the Canada’s relatively recent cannabis legalization, consumers only had to worry about government surveillance. Now, however, the cannabis industry joins the rest of the world in having their purchasing habits monitored.

Ontario-based GroundLevel Insights, a Canadian intelligence company, has recently launched a beta trial for its new AI platform that will gather information about cannabis consumers both before and after purchase. The entities taking part in the beta include licensed producers, retail and medical clinics, government and regulatory bodies, market research companies and advertising agencies. The data will be utilized by industry stakeholders to identify audience patterns.

The commercial version of the platform is currently scheduled to launch in early December, around the time of the MJBizCon.

GroundLevel will use first- and third-party information. The former means data it collects itself through consumers’ phones coming into contact with WiFi or Bluetooth devices at clinics and dispensaries, while the latter applies to data from mobile operators like AT&T or Verizon, as well as the “about five or six hundred major apps,” social media usage and Google Maps.

“What we’re doing is leveraging movement science data on the movement of the cannabis consumer” / Photo: whyframestudio / iStock / Getty Images Plus

“What we’re doing is leveraging movement science data on the movement of the cannabis consumer and aggregating these data sets into a single AI platform that then analyzes that data and provides insights and competitive intelligence,” said Asif Khan, CEO of GroundLevel Insights.

This platform will, like most other forms of data collection, not be a voluntary one for the consumer. For a group of consumers often reluctant to share even their credit card information for legal purchases, this could prove troubling to some.

Individuals would need to withdraw from every major app and network to opt out / Photo: Supplied

“Short of the consumer personally withdrawing themselves from every major app on the planet and every major network, that’s the only way they opt out,” said Khan. “And, quite frankly, this kind of data collection exists with or without our company.”

Khan stressed that the company won’t have any specific information on the individual consumer, citing a typical example of the kind of datapoint that might emerge from this platform as, “out of everyone that visited the store today, 18 percent of them went to Home Depot afterwards.”

For social media, he said the platform can show a business what the conversation about its store looks like within a certain radius. It can also show stores how many of its customers are first-timers as opposed to repeats.

Consistent behaviour over periods of time could open up the possibility of cross-promotional marketing campaigns / Photo: undefined undefined / iStock / Getty Images Plus

While Khan said there are hundreds of different categories of businesses shown for pre- and post-cannabis purchase, the platform will aggregate the top five businesses visited before and after.

“Over periods of time, you may notice consistent behaviour and you may want to reach out to those businesses and work on cross-promotional marketing campaigns or things like that,” said Khan. “In a market like cannabis, [this data] is still new and emerging and the whole point of our platform is to provide that data and enable better business decisions,” he said.

The platform will monitor both the legal and illegal cannabis purchases, and so Khan said there is a potential for collaboration with government. “If we see licensed operators, we can see they’re going to illegal operators and we can provide that data to help track them down.”