Customized Shopping

Successful online businesses have even found ways to tailor the shopping experience to individual buyers. These innovators give consumers tools that ease product searches or profile individuals’ buying preferences and offer information tailored to their needs.

A good example is Preview Travel, where consumers have access to a powerful engine for customizing their trip plans. A would-be shopper enters a destination and preferred dates, times, and airline. An automated flight-planning system then displays a selection of flights that match the desired itinerary-including fare, seat availability, type of airplane, meals, number of stops, and the flight’s on-time record.