Net Personalization: A Primer
WHAT IT IS:
Personalization is what merchants and publishers do to tailor a Web site or E-mail to a consumer based on past behavior, tastes shared with others, age, or location. Surfers either give the data to the site operator, or it can be gleaned by their movements or purchases on the site. Customization involves the active choices that Web site visitors make to specify which news, products, or other features they want to see regularly. The goal for merchants: One-to-one marketing.
HOW YOU USE IT:
Shoppers can use a program called an intelligent agent--also known as a bot--that automatically scours the Net for information, such as prices on products. For customer service, a few Web sites feature a humanlike chatterbot, an intelligent agent that can answer questions in a conversational style. Many retail sites offer customers a recommendation service, which uses complex mathematical formulas to suggest products that match customer preferences.
THE TECHNOLOGY:
Collaborative filtering compares customers' purchase history, stated preferences, or clickstream--where they go on a site--with those of other buyers to determine what they're likely to buy next. Another matching technique is neural networks--sets of programs and data that mimic the human brain to recognize hidden patterns in complex data, such as correlations between buyers of seemingly unrelated products.
RELATED ITEMS
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- TABLE: Net Personalization: A Primer
- TABLE: Personalization Pacesetters
- CHART: Personalization Takes Off...And the Payoff Can Be Swift
- FENDING OFF THOSE PESKY SNOOPS
- TABLE: Take Control
- SOME MATCHES ARE NOT EXACTLY MADE IN HEAVEN
- GRAPHIC: Getting Personal
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