Electronic Scores Rank Consumers by Potential Value - NYTimes.com

Electronic Scores Rank Consumers by Potential Value - NYTimes.com:

Buying-power scores, compiled from huge amounts of data, measure your potential value as a customer. But you’ll probably never learn your total.

AMERICANS are obsessed with their scores. Credit scores, G.P.A.’s, SAT’s, blood pressure and cholesterol levels — you name it.

So here’s a new score to obsess about: the e-score, an online calculation that is assuming an increasingly important, and controversial, role in e-commerce.

These digital scores, known broadly as consumer valuation or buying-power scores, measure our potential value as customers. What’s your e-score? You’ll probably never know. That’s because they are largely invisible to the public. But they are highly valuable to companies that want — or in some cases, don’t want — to have you as their customer.