Multichannel Marketing
from the big-word-for-scary-stuff dept
News.com has an article about how stores are looking to tie their online customer databases to their offline customer databases so they can do what's called multichannel marketing. What this really means is they want to know who you are and what you buy no matter where you are. In the article they quote some guy talking about how he's a "happy customer" the second he walks into a store to buy some speakers and the salesguy pops some info into a palm device and says "these speakers here go with the stereo you bought online last week". He's a "happy customer"? If that ever happens to me, I'm a scared and probably pissed off customer. There may be some instances where I could find this useful, but mostly, I don't want people to know what else I've bought from them online. This sounds like the type of thing that only marketing people love.
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