The rapid commercial evolution of the World Wide Web has resulted in an environment
where consumers engage directly with businesses in a variety of ways and levels of
interactivity. This has resulted in a conflict between the need for identifying individual
consumers in buyer–seller interactions through the use of personal data and their desire to
protect this personal data. This paper contributes to the discussion of new developments in
online marketing by investigating the potential for a profiling system managed by individual …

The rise in customer-to-customer interaction on the Internet is causing a shift of the locus of
control inmarketing communication away frommarketers to consumers, who can be more
selective about, and involved in, the creation of the information they obtain about products,
companies, and consumption behaviour. Internet consumeropinion platforms (COPs) allow
consumers to read electronic word of mouth (eWOM) from a wide range of individuals
choosing to share consumption experiences. Implicit communities (Resnick & Varian, 1997; …