Because service is sexy, and sex is desire, and desire is what sells, and in order to give consumers what they desire, you have to give them something uniquely targeted to their own desires. Not the desire of a bunch of nameless others. As any good lover can tell you, service is about reciprocity, attentiveness, and, of course, constant stimulation. And I'll value it as long as you remain attentive to my desire. Any company worth its consumers should implement it.
Customized service is made of more money than a paradise of products can ever be.
The global interconnectedness that the Internet enables in turn expands the individual consumer identity well beyond the rote categories that product-based economies live and die by. As interconnectedness expands, unbounded individual identities will proliferate, and the bland homogenous middle that is the crux of the product economy will be radically reconfigured, if not obliterated. This transition, though it may seem ethereal, kicks our current business models right in the crotch. Blips of meaningless broad-category data won't tell you Dick from Jane. And, as I often say, if you don't know who your consumers are, you'll never make any money from them.