Re: Is personalization really personal?

From: Tim Lee <TLee_at_webcmo.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 09:31:04 -0500 (CDT)

In my original post about personalization, I simply
discussed if personalization is really personal. But I did
not touch the topics such as "Is the so called
personalization effective?" and "Under what conditions is
the so called personalization effective?" I will discuss
these questions in the future. (When you guys are playing
golf.)

Here I want to discuss another relevant topic: Personal
experience, personalization and segmentation.

We shall not confused personalization with personal
experience. As we know, personalization is designed to
enhance customers' personal experience. Therefore, to
enhance personal experience is the goal while
personalization is only the tool.

What we have learnt from Amazon's book recommendation
system? The first is that although people tried to use the
concept of personalization to enhance personal experience,
they ended up with the concept of segmentation; The second
is it is not necessary to use personalization (the
personalization that is really personal) to enhance
customers" personal experience.

As we saw in many related discussions, they have obtained
"personal experience" under such situations. Or more
precisely, your customers can obtain personal experience
under segmentation.

CRAIG VINCENT WROTE:
>Although when I see the list of other things people have
>purchased who bought the same thing I did...I do notice many
>things I'm not interested in...but I'd say 95% I actually do
>wind up seeing something else I'd be interested in
>purchasing (assuming of course I haven't already bought it).

>A setup like that perfectly targets impulse buying to a
>qualified customer...and if you tracked what people purchase
>from your company more often than not you would notice a
>trend of what customers purchase.

As I always said, you don't need to treat each customer
differently. Instead you should treat each customer as a
customer. If you do so, they will tell you about their
personal experiences.

So before we start to advocate or implement personalization,
we need to think about our goal? Can we reach our goal --to
enhance our customers' personal experiences -- with
something more effective and easier?

Regards,

Tim Lee
Editor -- Journal of Web Marketing Research
http://www.WebCMO.com
Innovations in web marketing research & strategies
Participate in "Web Design STrategy" survey to receive your exclusive report.
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Received on Wed Aug 04 1999 - 15:51:56 CDT