The Internet offers the Holy Grail of one-on-one marketing, but for most marketers, this cup of customer knowledge has been frustratingly out of reach as many one-to-one schemes have not yielded expected results.
A US-based software vendor, Net Perceptions, believes it has found the answer to the one-to-one marketing Internet dilemma.
Instead of mining entire databases, Net Perception`s software uses collaborative filtering, which selects a sample of users, compares them for patterns, and fills in gaps in their buying/browsing habits in order to predict their wants and needs. Since this comparison is constantly taking place, user matches often change, creating an illusion of one-to-one marketing.
The technology is being used for product and content filtering by the likes of UK-based supermarket chain Tesco, CDNow, eToys, JC Penny, and other dot-coms.
Other applications for the product include e-mail-based marketing campaigns, call centre analysis, advertising (particularly cross- and up-selling), and knowledge management. It is relatively platform-independent as it relies on the component object request broker architecture (CORBA) standard, popular among the Linux and middleware community.
Net Perceptions claims a three-times higher propensity to buy a product recommended by the collaborative filtering method. However, over December, Net Perception customers eToys and CDNow suffered stock losses when they could not meet their Christmas surge in demand.
Net Perceptions partners with Broadvision, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Real Media, Rockwell Electronic Commerce, Vignette, Sun and others. The software is available from iLab CRM, which has an exclusivity agreement with Net Perceptions to resell the product locally.
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