Last week two events highlighted why it’s so important to know your shopper, and to double and triple check to insure your data is right. The value lies in creating a personalized experience for the shopper, who hopefully will become a customer. If you make assumptions based on almost anything but hard data, you are asking for trouble.

The first event: Axciom, a vendor that supplies businesses with marketing data launched a new web site on September 5. The site (www.aboutthedata.com) is intended to create a certain amount of transparency for consumers and also allow us to change things that aren’t right or opt out of things you don’t want known about you. Of course, there are a lot of caveats that let you know opting out will increase rather than decrease the number of offers you get. Well-played, Axciom. I’ll take relevancy for $500, Alex.

Assuming it can validate your identity (it seemed to be averaging around 60% in terms of just letting people onto the site the first day or two), it will tell you everything that gets passed along to companies that want to sell you stuff. Categories include: demographic data (which they call “Characteristic Data, “) home data, vehicle data, economic data, shopping data and household interests data.

The data about me was about 65% accurate (likely skewed by a trip to Galapagos that made me appear to enjoy camping). Home refinancing also seems to also confuse a lot of marketing systems, and Axciom’s was no exception. It got the value of my house correctly. But it got my purchase price (which was a re-fi) wrong by half. My economic data was confusing. It more or less got my income right, but other line items didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

In that Shopping Data category, I finally saw a glimmer of light. Axciom has me recorded as a mail order responder and buyer. That helps explain why I’ve been getting an ungodly number of catalogs over the past two years. I mean…INSANE. I adjusted that along with removing my buying history, which was not far off. It may well be that they include Amazon.com as a mail order company. I can’t really tell.

I finally looked at vehicle data. It only had one of my two cars listed, but it recognized that I quite likely have the intent to purchase a vehicle soon. And that’s important when we take a look at the second experience I had last weekend.

The second event: Yup, you guessed it. I decided it’s probably time to get a new car. Now, I don’t expect anyone to start taking up a collection for me or anything, but this story has a point. So bear with the build-up that follows.

People who knew me in New England would be very surprised to know I’ve still got the BMW 530i I bought there in late-2002. I’ve never kept a vehicle this long in my life. I’m usually a three-year-and-out, or (one time) a seven year owner. But I moved to Miami where my car is garaged, and the weather never gets cold. I work out of the house, have two cars (a girl’s gotta have a convertible for the winter), and the Beemer is a stick-shift. The manual transmission was a blast up North, but isn’t very entertaining living on the flat sandbar known as “Florida, ” in a city known for intense and dense traffic. So I don’t drive it much, and eleven years later, the BMW has 55,000 miles on it, and looks pretty pristine. Still, even a pristine vehicle that’s eleven years old starts to break down. And I’ve been getting itchy. I’m a car freak and really love to drive (hence the manual transmission on a luxury vehicle). I’m always looking at the latest models and reading reviews. Being ready to pull the trigger, I decided I’d check out both the Audi A4 and the BMW 328i. The dealerships are both nearby, and I’ve been hearing really good things about the Audi.

Last Sunday, I jumped in my car and headed for the Audi dealership (the name is Prestige Imports in North Miami Beach, if you’re interested). I walked into the dealership expecting to be mobbed by eager sales people. At car dealerships, it has always been so. Much to my surprise, no one would talk to me or even really look at me. I walked over to the Information Desk and voiced concern. I asked “How could I trust the service here if I can’t even get someone to sell me a vehicle or take me for a drive? ” She muttered something about having just opened, and people having appointments (right…the lines were forming…not). Finally, she grudgingly got someone to grudgingly take me for a test drive. Before we were to take the drive, the young salesman asked for my license and insurance card so he could copy them. I knew the driver’s license was necessary, but the insurance card? I wrote it off in my head and handed it over to him.

He looked at my card and said “Are you sure you want to look at new vehicles? Perhaps you want to look at a used car? ” Boom! That sound you hear is my brain exploding.

I picked myself up from the floor, stuttered a bit (this was really turning into a unique showroom experience), and said that yes, I was sure I wanted to look at a new vehicle. For some unfathomable reason, I had been profiled from the minute I walked through the door. Since I had no obvious visible deformities and was actually dressed reasonably well for a Labor Day weekend in 90 degree Miami (I even wore some jewelry for the occasion) I don’t know where it started from, but clearly it ended with my insurance card showing the age of my vehicle.

I felt a TASTE of what Oprah Winfrey must have felt when that Swiss sales clerk told her she really couldn’t afford that $38,000 handbag. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be Black in a Caucasian world, and the endless subtle and not-so-subtle profiling they must encounter. But dang, it was still painful.

As it turned out, there was a lot I didn’t like about the vehicle. Like I said, I’m a driver, and the torque steer upon hard acceleration and soft steering at slow speeds made it easy to just say no. You know I was verbal about it. Of course, my sales guy didn’t care. Neither did I. So I left and headed off to the BMW dealership.

The BMW experience was what you’d expect. Courteous prompt service, asking for my driver’s license with no request for insurance card and, the sweetest ride I’ve had in some time. And the prices are right. I expect to have a new 328i sitting in my garage sometime soon.

There are a couple of lessons here. One lesson is [obviously] that profiling is a bad thing. You never know who’s going to be ready to spend that very day. But if we move beyond presumption, there’s some fairly accurate data out there, if you just choose to look at it. Our retail survey respondents continue to emphasize the need to incorporate customer data into their inventory planning processes and their in-store experience. But the other lesson is, there’s a lot of data readily available to retailers of all sorts. It would have been easy for the Information Desk at “Prestige ” to quickly look me up in Axciom’s system. They would have then seen I have the money and the inclination to buy a new car. I would have forgiven them for thinking I had children. But I can’t forgive them for so grossly profiling me.

And that’s why I will never buy a new Audi. Hopefully your potential customers aren’t saying the same thing about you.