Privacy Paranoia

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

Remember the vision of the One-to-One Enterprise several years ago--the vision that within several years, everything would be tailored to our personalized needs and preferences? We were painted a picture that advertising would be targeted, products would be tailored and customized, and customer service would be personalized.

Well, it has been nearly seven years since Enterprise  One-to-One--the groundbreaking book from marketing gurus Martha Rogers and Don Peppers came out--and I find little evidence of a one-to-one enterprise in my everyday life. Part of the reason is that information is so distributed in data stores all over that companies are unable to invest the resources and lack the delivery discipline to compile a complete view of the customer.

The second reason is that privacy pundits have made Americans so concerned about the privacy of their information that Americans are wary to give out any personal information to companies. Obviously, personalized marketing has not eliminated telemarketing, as evidenced by the recent "Do Not Call" legislation, and I notice little change on websites that I visit repeatedly where I still see the same annoying pop-up ads and information that I have zero information in. Do we have little hope that the One-to-One Enterprise will ever exist? Or can issues regarding privacy and data …

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