It is a basic rule of selling anything to anyone that the more you know about your customer the more likely you are to be able to sell your goods and services. This knowledge is acquired in many ways. In our opening example the communication was direct and the salesclerk gained personal knowledge of the customer and her needs. Here, customers are thought of in terms of demographics and psychographics and information is accumulated by inference. When one of these stores advertises a special on garden tools in one town this week and another the next week, they can correlate the differences in sales in those towns with known demographic data and arrive at conclusions about the kinds of products that should be presented to customers in those two towns and other towns like them.
Electronic commerce operates on the same fundamental principles.
Whether the site is selling books, radios, handling your stock transactions, or simply providing support to purchasers of a product, the exchange of information between vendor and customer is part of the transaction. It is a dialog that informs both the purchase and the future relationship. Increasingly, electronic commerce is seen as an opportunity to personalize the relationship between individual sellers and their thousands sometimes millions of customers, mixing the local hardware store experience with mass-merchandising expertise. In recent weeks and months we have seen a constant parade of new products intended to help electronic commerce practitioners build constructive interactivity into their offerings. Among others, Brightware's Advice Agent, TIS HumanActive NetCollaboration, and Digital Impact have been of particular note, providing new ways to open channels of communication with customers.