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Hot and Bothered

Customer Portfolios is in the business of understanding customers. By knowing their behavior, purchases, channel, timing, price point, and their shopping behavior we can identify their segments, their needs and wants, and what they are most likely to buy next. This is not done to be creepy. Rather, it is to help our clients be more engaging and to avoid reenacting Ground Hog Day (the 1993 Bill Murray comedy movie in which every day is like the very first, in which everyone repeatedly treats Bill as if they don’t know him.) Outside of our world, out on the World Wide Web, every action and experience leaves a trail of data. I keep seeing the media addressing this from a scare perspective; see examples.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/business/company-envisions-vaults-for-personal-data.html?emc=eta1

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324784404578143144132736214.html

Perhaps a better approach than “the treat” will be to look at “the opportunity”? Opportunities for marketers and consumers alike. For marketers, only speaking to prospects that may actually want the service, product, deal being offered. For consumers, only getting what is wanted, like men’s sporting goods for skiing, ice skating, snow shoeing (it will be winter soon, I hope!) vs. woman’s products and goods. Can one say that we are at a point not dissimilar to where we were 10 years ago when brick and mortar retailer’s fear was that online retailers were going destroy them, compared to where we are today where they have evolved into opportunistic “multi-channel” retailers?