Companies have always gathered information about their customers. But now they have a lot more ways to do it. Eric Martin is a partner at Boost Partners, a management consulting company. He says the Internet has increased the amount of data that companies can collect.
ERIC MARTIN: "Technology is creating an environment where your searches, your online behavior, leads the seller to know much more about you than would, for instance, a retailer when you walked into their store."
A salesperson in a store can only assume certain things about you based on your appearance. Online sellers, however, have far more information to work with. Eric Martin says this includes information about which website directed you to them.
ERIC MARTIN: "Which has a bearing on how they view you as a customer and what your buying habits might be. The people that you deal with you online can’t see you at all physically. But they know that, for instance, when you came to Orbitz you may have been directed there by Kayak, which is itself a comparison site, which then may lead Orbitz to believe that you’re searching for deals."
Information about the referring site is only one of the things that a site like Orbitz will consider. Is the person a return visitor? Which hotels has this person viewed in the past? Websites collect this kind of information by placing small files known as cookies on a person's computer.
In the case of Orbitz, Mac and PC users were actually given the same choices. However, they appeared in different orders. For Mac users, the higher-priced hotels showed up higher in the search results. Orbitz says ninety percent of its users book a hotel that appears on the first page, and mostly in the top five listings.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25