Summary.
Companies spend billions of dollars every year marketing directly to potential customers and managing relationships with existing ones. Increasingly, thanks to technologies allowing them to gather extraordinarily rich data on consumer demographics and behavior, firms can make the individual the principal unit of analysis and management. Armed with these data, they can tailor their messages—targeting just those people who would be likely to want a particular product or suggesting additional items that current customers would be likely to buy. At the same time, using related technologies that allow them to reach consumers through many different channels, companies can improve the overall effectiveness of their marketing communications, further increasing their potential profits.