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The Power of One: Gaining Business Value from Personalization Technologies

by Nirmal Pal & Arvind Rangaswamy

261 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-1500; ISBN 1-4120-1121-3; US$25.00, C$30.95, EUR19.95, £13.95

Corporate giants and world-renowned academic institutions combined work on value delivery through personalized products and services, addressing every component of "customerization."

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book Customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and overall business efficiency are exponentially increased when companies exploit the tremendous customization potential of Internet applications. The Power of One brings together some of the greatest minds in e-business, marketing, and information technology. The all-star roster represents corporate giants like IBM, Xerox, and AT&T Wireless as well as world-renowned academic institutions including Penn State, Georgia Tech, University of Texas, and Carnegie Mellon. Their combined work is the first and last word on value delivery through personalized products and services, taking the reader through every component of "customerization," including: * The business benefits and impact * Implementing and managing technology * Personalization in mobile commerce * Maximizing fulfillment and customer service * Ensuring security and privacy * Much more. Businesses thrive by reaching as many customers as possible. The Power of One is about reaching all of them -- one at a time.

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About the Author Nirmal Pal (University Park, PA) is the executive director of the eBusiness Research Center at Pennsylvania State University and former Director, IBM Global Services Consulting Group. He is the co-editor of the award-winning Pushing the Digital Frontier (AMACOM: 0-8144-0644-0) Arvind Rangaswamy (University Park, PA) is the Jonas H. Anchel Professor of Marketing and Research Director of the eBusiness Research Center at Pennsylvania State University. He is the coauthor of Marketing Engineering and a contributor to leading marketing journals.

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Sample Excerpt

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Gaining Business Value from Personalization Technologies by Arvind Rangaswamy and Nirmal Pal
Chapter 1: Business Imperatives of Personalization by Kirk Rothrock and Nirmal Pal
Introduction
What is personalization and why is it important to businesses?
Industry practices and anecdotes
Opportunities
Issues
Trade-offs
Successful planning and execution of personalization
Conclusions
Chapter 2: From Many to One: Personalized Product Fulillment Systems by Arvind Rangaswamy and Anant Balakrishnan
Introduction
Embracing and extending personalization
The long route from pull to push and back to pull
Mind over matter
Now,the hard part...
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Personalization in the Wireless World by Bruce D. Weinberg, Judy Cavalieri, and Terry Madonia
Introduction
Consumer buying decision process
Wireless personalization implementation opportunities and recommendations
Important wireless world realities and marketing issues
Marketing in the wireless world
Identifying customer preferences
Privacy,security,and trust
Partnership and coordination
Summary
Chapter 4: Beyond Personalization: Experience Architecture by John Adcox and Mike Wittenstein
Personalization -- bringing back the good old days
Gathering personalization data
Personalization and operations
Experience architecture
Experience and technology
Experience and measurement
Experience and value
When personalization is a negative experience
Making a company customer-centric
Communicating the experience -- clues and brand stories
Experience architects
The experience architecture method
Experience architecture and personalization
Chapter 5: Personalization of Global Sales and Marketing Activities in the Digital Economy: A Strategic Perspective by Venkatesh Shankar and Mary P. Donato
Introduction
Key issues in personalization of online global sales and marketing activities
A strategic framework for global sales and marketing personalization decisions
Formulation of strategy for global sales and marketing personalization
Future issues in personalizing Web sites for global sales and marketing
Conclusions
Chapter 6: Learning About Customers Without Asking by Alan L. Montgomery and Kannan Srinivasan
Introduction
An example of passive learning
The inputs of online learning
Passive learning
Collaborative filtering
Proactive learning
Discussions and conclusions
Chapter 7: Personalized Product Presentation: The Influence of Electronic Recommendation Agents on Consumer Choice by Gerald Häubl, Kyle B. Murray, and Valerie Trifts
Introduction
The trade-off between effort and accuracy
Overview of empirical evidence
recommendation agents and consumer decision making
recommendation agents and consumer preference construction
Summary of findings
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Personalizing Your Web Site: A How-to Guide by Anindya Datta, Helen Thomas, and Debra VanderMeer
Introduction
How Web personalization works:an overview
Building a personalized Web page
Managing Web-based content
Web personalization paradigms
Potential pitfalls of personalization technologies
Final thoughts
Chapter 9: Modeling and Personalization of Users by Eren Manavoglu, Lee Giles, Amanda Spink, and James Z. Wang
Introduction
Obtaining models of users
User information inference techniques
Commercial user modeling systems
User's privacy
Conclusion
Chapter 10: Technological Aspects of Privacy and Security for Personalization by Ingemar J. Cox, David M. Pennock,and Eric J. Glover
Introduction
Acquiring personal information
Drawing inferences from user actions
Privacy and security issues
Summary
Chapter 11: The Role of Privacy in the New Reality by Thomas Summerlin and John W. Bagby
Introduction
Privacy is a personal challenge
What is IT privacy?
The importance of self-regulation in earning trust
Personalization, the other side of privacy?
The role of privacy law
The privacy quadrant
Privacy and mass customization and mass personalization
List of Contributors
Index

excerpt from Introduction: Gaining Business Value from Personalization Technologies

Arvind Rangaswamy, Jonas H. Anchel Professor of Marketing and Research Director, eBusiness Research Center, Penn State University

Nirmal Pal, Executive Director, eBusiness Research Center, Penn State University

The engines of the industrial revolution were factories that used mass production technologies to dramatically increase efficiency in the production of goods. Over time, mass production was combined with mass marketing using mass media, starting with newspapers, then radio, followed by television, direct mail, and telemarketing. The resulting economic system relied heavily on forecasting aggregate needs and then using factories to produce large quantities of items for inventory based on those forecasts. While this system has evolved to deliver many varieties of products (for example, over 150 models of cars and over 100 varieties of detergents), it is not really designed to satisfy the needs of any individual fully, because there is a fundamental asymmetry between production and consumption: production efficiency is maximized through economies of scale, i.e., producing large quantities of single items; on the other hand, consumption value is maximized by catering to individual needs, one customer at a time.

In recent years, technologies such as mass customization and personalization have emerged to provide firms with the ability to alter this asymmetry. In particular, personalization technologies enable firms to treat each customer as a unique person and serve that customer's possibly unique needs. Customers are no longer anonymous members of some hypothetical groups that marketers term market segments. Today, many customers already benefit from various personalization initiatives that firms have undertaken. Consider the following:

• Women, or for that matter, men, can create their own signature lipstick and eye shadow at www.reflect.com, choosing from several product options and colors provided at the site.
• When you call Fidelity Investments, your call is routed to the most appropriate service representative based on your customer status (e.g., level or type of investments you have with the company) and the kinds of questions/issues you may have.
• At eBay.com, you can set up your own page, my eBay, where you can track the items on which you are bidding, the items you have won or lost in the past month, and access the complete history of your transactions as an eBay seller.
• You can set up your travel preferences at travelocity.com (e.g., preferred departure city, seat and meal preference, frequent flier numbers, etc.) so that when you book an airline ticket, those preferences are automatically applied to a reservation when applicable.
• When you visit the Lands' End Web site, the company extrapolates, based on what you do at the site, the colors you are unlikely to choose at all. When you then shop for other items of clothing, the colors that will appeal to you the most are shown first.

These are examples of personalization programs that have become economically feasible because of recent developments in e-business technologies. All indications are that new personalization initiatives will continue to be developed and deployed even during the current economic downturn. It is just a matter of time before Web sites become smart enough to adapt to your needs by presenting the information and navigation paths most relevant to you. Likewise, it is only a matter of time before Web sites are used more extensively to help you create food products designed just for you (both in terms of taste and nutritional content) and personalized medications (e.g., vitamins).

In this book, we have brought together thought leaders in academia and practice who have had considerable experience in thinking about, and implementing, various personalization programs. The result is a book that gives you a panoramic view of the continuing developments in this area. The various chapters in the book cover the "what," the "why," and the "how," as well as potential impact of personalization on business performance. By reading this book carefully, the reader should benefit in the following ways:

• Understand the role of personalization in differentiating the company from competitors by better serving existing and potential customers.
• Recognize the hidden dangers of personalization -- avoiding those programs that serve customers well, but put the company out of business.
• Learn about the key opportunities and challenges in developing and implementing a strategy for personalization for your organization.
• Identify ways to measure the impact of personalization programs and articulate the value of the program to employees and management.

Our hope is that you, the reader, will have a feast of ideas to digest, as well as a long list of action items for implementing personalization initiatives within your organization.

True personalization is more than skin deep. It is more than just recognizing customers and greeting them by their names. It is more than just identifying and rewarding loyal customers. It involves rethinking the very basis of how organizational resources, processes, and customer offerings are configured to best cater to the needs of customers, one at a time. In some sense, if a firm is fully personalized, it "rents" out to customers just the right set of its assets for just the right amount to serve their individual needs. Personalization is really a way of co-creating, with your customers, a highly rewarding experience for them in purchasing and using a product or a service.

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Catalogue Information

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