Short description
We have all been to Web sites that welcome us by name, offering us discounts, deals, or special access to content. This title examines the emergence of databases as marketing tools and the implications this may have for media, advertising, and society.
Long description
The price we pay for the new strategies in database marketing that closely track desirable customers, offering them benefits in return for personal information.We have all been to Web sites that welcome us by name, offering us discounts, deals, or special access to content. For the most part, it feels good to be wanted - to be valued as a customer. But if we thought about it, we might realize that we've paid for this special status by turning over personal information to a company's database. And we might wonder whether other customers get the same deals we get, or something even better. We might even feel stirrings of resentment toward customers more valued than we are. In Niche Envy , Joseph Turow examines the emergence of databases as marketing tools and the implications this may have for media, advertising, and society. If the new goal of marketing is to customize commercial announcements according to a buyer's preferences and spending history - or even by race, gender, and political opinions - what does this mean for the twentieth-century tradition of equal access to product information, and how does it affect civic life?Polls show that the public is nervous about giving up personal data. Meanwhile, companies try to persuade the most desirable customers to trust them with their information in return for benefits. Niche Envy tracks the marketing logic that got us to this uneasy impasse.
Review
Many people have written about the perils and promise of database marketing, especially as it has become turbocharged by the Internet. But few have done as insightful a job as Joseph Turow. His description of 'marketing discrimination' was an eye-opener for me, one of those rare new concepts that will never let you look at the world the same way again. - Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media