Build relationships over time When a company identifies individuals and remembers their preferences and behavior, it implies a relationship over time. But it's not always clear how to maintain a relationship over time. And, in some cases, it may not make much sense, such as for products that are bought infrequently or that are too inexpensive to justify a relationship. Community The Motley Fool site provides information and analysis on investments but the feature that is most active, and that which brings people back, is the community. The community is a collection of discussion groups to which visitors post about 5,000 messages each day.
Visitors provide the content, the messages, which bring other visitors back for frequent visits.
Motley Fool provides the venue where it can happen and along the way they sell ad space and a few products. The loyal visitors return for discussions with the rest of the community. Anticipate customer wants Vendors see a lot of customers with similar needs, tastes and interests. They can use this experience, which is not available to individual customers, to anticipate what may appeal to an individual customer. Bookmatcher BookMatcher is Amazon's collaborative filtering function.