Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age

We have all been to Web sites that welcome us by name, offering usdiscounts, deals, or special access to content. For the most part, it feels good tobe wanted--to be valued as a customer. But if we thought about it, we might realizethat we've paid for this special status by turning over personal information to acompany's database. And we might wonder whether other customer

We have all been to Web sites that welcome us by name, offering usdiscounts, deals, or special access to content. For the most part, it feels good tobe wanted--to be valued as a customer. But if we thought about it, we might realizethat we've paid for this special status by turning over personal information to acompany's database. And we might wonder whether other customers get the same dealswe get, or something even better. We might even feel stirrings of resentment towardcustomers more valued than we are. In Niche Envy, Joseph Turow examines theemergence of databases as marketing tools and the implications this may have formedia, advertising, and society. If the new goal of marketing is to customizecommercial announcements according to a buyer's preferences and spending history--oreven by race, gender, and political opinions--what does this mean for thetwentieth-century tradition of equal access to product information, and how does itaffect civic life?Turow shows that these marketing techniques are not wholly new;they have roots in direct marketing and product placement, widely used decades agoand recently revived and reimagined by advertisers as part of "customer relationshipmanagement" (known popularly as CRM). He traces the transformation of marketingtechniques online, on television, and in retail stores. And he describes publicreaction against database marketing--pop-up blockers, spam filters, commercial-skipping video recorders, and other ad-evasion methods. Polls show thatthe public is nervous about giving up personal data. Meanwhile, companies try topersuade the most desirable customers to trust them with their information in returnfor benefits. Niche Envy tracks the marketing logic that got us to this uneasyimpasse.