Caveats: information-asymmetry decision-edge brief (June 2026) — vendor-recycled magnitudes + modeled projections

Quarantined claims (do not state as neutral fact):

• Quarantine: "5x-25x cheaper to retain," "5pct retention → 25-95pct profit," "80pct profits from 20pct customers," "AI churn → 20-30pct retention improvement" — vendor-recycled, untraced to primary — "5x-25x cheaper to retain"; "5pct retention → 25-95pct profit"; "80pct profits from 20pct customers"; "AI churn → 20-30pct retention improvement." Vendor-recycled, untraced to primary. Capability solid, magnitudes not.
• dunnhumby co-founder Edwina Dunn — "over the next 10 years Clubcard and dunnhumby made an extra £60bn of sales" (DS, quarantine) — "Extra £60bn of sales over 10 years" from dunnhumby co-founder. Participant claim, incentive-flagged; attribute explicitly if used.
• BDC modeled projection — "if all Canadian SMEs reached very high digital maturity, productivity could rise ~38pct, GDP ~14pct, ~$350B" (DS, modeled not realised) — modeled projection of upside if all SMEs reached very high maturity; not a realised outcome. Always label "modelled projection."
• Motley Fool (2026-05-29) on Progressive — "nearly two decades of data, an economic moat"; Q1 2026 combined ratio 86.4 vs 96 goal (DS, investment commentary) — investment-commentary framing of Progressive's moat. Use only directionally.
• IDC "2.5 hours/day searching for information" — 2001 intranet-era estimate, widely mythologised — 2001 intranet-era estimate, partly mythologised. Use as motivation only, not current hard data.

Excluded from any article as edge evidence:

• Progressive consumer-savings marketing ($169/$322/$328 avg, "up to 30pct," $1.2B discounts) — EXCLUDED from any article as edge evidence — Progressive consumer-savings marketing ($169-$328 avg, up-to-30pct, $1.2B discounts). Describes consumer savings, not the firm's information edge.

Source-incentive flags (use with explicit attribution):

• BDC digital-maturity research — "only one in five Canadian businesses has achieved a high level of digital maturity, while more than half show low levels" — BDC is a federal Crown corporation with a mandate-aligned interest in encouraging SME digital adoption.
• Tesco Clubcard 1994 trial — 9-14 stores over 3 months, >50 million transactions; dunnhumby analysed ~10pct sample / Tesco Clubcard — overtook Sainsbury's in 1995 within a year of launch; helped double grocery market share within ~3 years — primary narrative is participant-authored (dunnhumby founders).
• American Airlines yield management — $1.4B over 3 years, ~5-7pct incremental revenue, Franz Edelman Award 1991 (Smith Leimkuhler Darrow, Interfaces 1992) — 5-7pct typical-uplift figure sometimes cited via American's own OR head (peer-reviewed venue, so mild flag only).

Aging / superseded sources:

• IDC 2001 + McKinsey 2012 search-time figures (IDC "2.5 hours/day searching for information" — 2001 intranet-era estimate, widely mythologised) — pre-modern-search, illustrative only.

Sister-brief caveats umbrellas (shared source-incentive asymmetry):

• Caveats for the data-driven-tools brief: vendor self-reporting on conversion; enterprise-scale benchmarks; named-user quotes; macro projections
• Caveats for the customer-facing-calculators brief: every conversion-lift figure is unproven; nearly all are vendor-self-reported
• Caveats for the client-portals brief: source-incentives are pervasive; the independent anchors are McKinsey and Gartner; market-size figures unreliable; the viral 42% stat is misattributed
• Caveats for the dashboards brief: pervasive BI/embedded-analytics vendor sourcing; the viral "60-70%" stat is folklore; SMB data thin; retention claims unproven