In olden days, before the internet arrived, shopping was quite simple. You’d go into a shop and buy something, and that was it. If you liked the shop, if it sold things you wanted to buy at a fair price, and if the shopkeeper was efficient and agreeable, you might return. But otherwise you wouldn’t. The shopkeeper might hope for your custom, but there wasn’t much else he could do about it. The customer was not only always right, as tradition dictated, but was also left in peace.
How different things are today. The customer is constantly harassed. Anyone who has ever bought anything on the internet has had his name and his transaction publicised all over cyberspace. He is a sitting duck, ready to be approached for custom by any company in the world. For the rest of his life, and probably for long afterwards, his email inbox will be clogged with sale catalogues.
But even more annoying than straightforward salesmanship is the more oblique approach.
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