Permission marketing can be used also. This involves asking customers for permission to gather personalized information or to contact them in the future. Finally, collaborative filtering is effective for learning customers' preferences and helping them choose items they may enjoy. The company tracks customers' preferences and purchase patterns, matches them with those of similar customers, and recommends other products based on purchases by similar customers. When customers collaborate with marketers, the customers are also learning their own preferences.
Customers can thus have more control and ensure they get what they want.
A product designed with the customer is by definition not wrong, so having a customer collaborate on discovering his or her own needs encourages the customer to commit. Finally, just being part of the process seems to increase satisfaction. Levi-Strauss found this to be the case with customized jeans. This information would be useful to the customer for financial planning and would provide a rich information bank for the marketer. Other customer histories can help the marketer.