805 - Chapter 13. Swimming in the Clickstream <blockquote> <p><script> function OpenWin(url, w, h) { if(!w) w = 400; if(!h) h = 300; window. open (url, "_new", "width=" + w + ",height=" + h + ",menubar=no,toobar=no,scrollbars=yes", true); } function Print() { window.focus(); if(window.print) { window.print(); window.setTimeout('window.close();',5000); } } </script><span></span></p> <table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr valign="top"></tr></table> <table width="100%" height="20" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1"><tr></tr></table> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr valign="top"> <td align="center"><table width="95%"><tr><td align="left"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"> <tr><td valign="top" height="5"><img src="/books/2/551/1/html/2/images/pixel.gif" width="1" height="5" alt="" border="0"></td></tr> <tr> <td><b><font size="1" color ="#0000FF">Team-Fly<img border="0" src="/books/2/551/1/html/2/Fly-Logo.gif" width="81" height="25"></font></b></td> <td valign="top" align="right"> </td> </tr> </table> <hr size="1"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"> <tr> <td valign="top" width="76" rowspan="4"><img src="/books/2/551/1/html/2/images/0130409510/0130409510_xs.jpg" width="76" height="95" border="0"></td> <td valign="top">Internet-Enabled Business Intelligence<br>By William A. Giovinazzo<br> </td> </tr> <tr><td>Table of Contents</td></tr> <tr><td></td></tr> <tr><td valign="bottom">Part 4. Building Relationships Over the Internet</td></tr> </table> <hr size ="1"> <br><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding ="0"><tr><td valign="top"> <h2>Chapter 13. Swimming in the Clickstream</h2> <blockquote> <p><span>I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.</span></p> <p><span>Zelda Fitzgerald</span><sup>[1]</sup></p> <blockquote><p><sup>[1]</sup> From letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (March 1932.) Reprinted with permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from <span>Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings</span>, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. Copyright 1991 by The Trustees under Agreement Dated July 3, 1975. Created by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith.</p></blockquote> </blockquote> <p>A customer-driven organization seeks to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with its customers. It is a symbiotic relationship similar to the relationship between a shark and a remora fish, described by Zelda Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, Zelda got it wrong: The remora fish feeds off the parasites on the shark, not off its offal. In this symbiotic relationship, the shark is cleaned and the remora fish is given a ride with a meal. In the symbiotic relationship between the customer and the company, the customer gets his or her needs and wants satisfied while the company is provided a long- term source of revenue. In the Internet age, we need to become a fish, a remora fish, and learn to swim in the clickstream.</p> <p>In his book <span>Customer Share Marketing</span>, Tom Osenton describes some of the differences between mass-market communications and one-to-one communications. We see in those differences that many of the technologies that make it possible to communicate with our customers were not available a few short years ago. Osenton substantiates Don Peppers and Martha Rogers' statement that one-to-one "was prohibitively expensive, and therefore nearly inconceivable, to the traditional marketer just a few years ago." Thanks to these new technologies, however, we are able to establish this more direct form of communication.</p> <p>One of the new technologies in the brick-and-mortar world that makes a one-to-one relationship possible is the register scanner. While it is a common part of our lives, this is a relatively new technology. Many may not recall one of the gaffs made by President Bush in the 1992 presidential election. During a visit to a grocery store, the scanners at the checkout impressed him. By that time, scanners were a common part of most people's lives.</p> <p>From a marketing perspective, scanners made it possible to implement frequent buyer programs. It is common for a grocery or video store chain to issue membership cards that are scanned with every purchase. These programs, while providing the customer with discounts and points towards different rewards, provide the company with a way to track customer behavior. In this chapter, we look at membership programs and their use in tracking customer behavior.</p> <p>Hey! Wait a minute, I thought this was a book about Internet-enabled business intelligence.</p> <p>Well, yes, it is. We begin this chapter by talking about membership cards as an example of programs in the brick-and-mortar world. We use this example to show where it is lacking. We then demonstrate how we can overcome these deficiencies in the Internet-enabled world of electronic storefronts. We show how the clickstream records every action performed by customers on our Web site and how we can gather this information for analysis.</p> <p>We discuss how gathering this information entails more than just parsing a few log files on the server. This chapter explores the problems with <span>raw</span> clickstream data. One way to resolve these problems is to employ the use of cookies. Although we briefly described cookies in an earlier chapter, we take a more in-depth look at them here, discussing their creation and use.</p> </td></tr></table> <hr size="1"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"> <tr><td valign="top" height="5"><img src="/books/2/551/1/html/2/images/pixel.gif" width="1" height="5" alt="" border="0"></td></tr> <tr> <td><b><font size="1" color="#0000FF">Team-Fly<img border="0" src="/books/2/551/1/html/2/Fly-Logo.gif" width="81" height="25"></font></b></td> <td valign="top" align="right"> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td valign="top" align="right">Top</td></tr></table> </td></tr></table></td> <td align="center"> </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3" align="center" valign="bottom"> <br><table width="100%"><tr><td height="25" valign="middle" colspan="4" align="center"> </td></tr></table> </td></tr> </table> </blockquote>
