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Conclusion: A Win-Win-Win Situation
Consumers will have an obvious interest in Lumeria's technology. The SuperProfile system will offer absolute privacy for those individuals who wish to remain completely anonymous and value to those who are willing to trade their data for direct payment, customized services, or added benefits. Consumers will inevitably feel more comfortable participating in e-commerce once they feel their privacy and the use of their personal data is securely under their control.
Advertisers and marketers (who simply want to communicate their message to individuals likely to respond to their advertisement) will also profit from the SuperProfile system and Identity Commerce (I-Commerce). Every unwanted or ignored advertisement is wasted money for the advertiser. Hence, the marketer invests money in pre-selecting her audience.
This money is given to a list broker, a credit card company, a magazine publisher, or other venue to help the marketer segment her audience. Once segmented, the marketer makes assumptions about each group and chooses a high cost/high impact (e.g. in person visit) or low cost/low impact (e.g. direct mail) approach. Although these assumptions may be efficient for the group, they are unlikely to be the most appropriate technique for each individual.
Lumeria's SuperProfile system allows the marketer to collaborate with each individual by allowing the individual to dictate to the marketer which approach is most efficient. For example, if the individual has minimal interest in the marketer's message, he can indicate his willingness to read an email message for a minimal cost to the marketer. As the individual's interest increases, he can indicate an interest in receiving a higher impact message (such as a telephone call or drop-in visit) for a higher fee. In fact, as the marketer demands more time and attention from the individual, the individual will expect to be compensated accordingly. I-Commerce gives the marketer the capability to tailor not only her message, but also the medium itself, to the needs and desires of the individual. Hence, both the marketer and the individual will benefit, as the needs of both parties are coordinated.
Merchants and Web sites will also profit from Lumeria's SuperProfile system. Individual companies, such as grocery stores and airlines, already collect personal data about their customers. The purpose of this data collection is to identify profitable customers. However, each company is unable to determine the individual's spending with that company as a percentage of his total spending for a given category (e.g. how much is the customer spending with competitors). This critical piece of data, available with the I-Commerce system and the individual's consent, can help a company to identify revenue growth opportunities with individuals who have additional demand for a given category but currently spend that with competitors.
Finally, many companies collect large amounts of data about its customers, but are unable to extract meaningful conclusions from the morass of bits and bytes. Lumeria's focus on personal data will help advertisers and merchants better understand what data they need and don't need. Also, much of this data is collected today at minimal cost and so companies have not found a need to prioritize the data. With Lumeria's business model, every additional byte will have a cost - paid to the individual - and therefore encourage companies to identify the value of the data received to insure a net positive return.
