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About this site

This site is a web adaptation of a book: “eme — your personal shopping robot”, published in 2020. It keeps the book’s argument and its numbers, and rebuilds them for reading on a screen.

eme in brief

eme turns everyday retail transactions into a shopper persona — calculated per brand from real activity rather than guessed from a survey. Each shopper resolves along four axes (category, customer type, gender, rank), and a store joins at one of four tiers, from a bare location listing up to a full enterprise. The persona stays embedded and private to the shopper. Everything else on this site is the argument for why that is worth building.

What changed in the adaptation

The chapters are copy-edited, not transcribed. The 2020 text carried typographic errors and a few duplicated paragraphs; those are corrected here. Substance, statistics, formulas and attributions are unchanged. Colours and mascot artwork were taken from the book’s own files rather than re-drawn — though the palette was darkened where the print colours could not carry text legibly on screen.

How this site is built

A static site — no server, no database, no tracking, and no cookies. Built with Astro and Tailwind, published as plain HTML. English and Arabic are equals: neither is a translation layer over the other.

Copyright & attribution

The book and its concept are the author’s own work. This site is an adaptation of it, and carries the same notice as the book’s cover.

Companies named on this site

Company and brand names appear throughout as illustrations — examples of a loyalty programme, a pop-up, a discount mechanic. They are named in text only. The book reproduced screenshots of several companies’ marketing; those images are deliberately not republished here. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Sources

The site quotes published research and industry data throughout. Everything cited anywhere on the site is listed here; nothing is listed that is not actually cited.

Exchange theory & marketing scholarship

Bagozzi, R. P. (1975). Marketing as Exchange. Journal of Marketing.
Bagozzi, R. P. (1974). Social Exchange in Marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
Homans, G. C. (1958). Social Behavior as Exchange; and Homans (1974).
Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and Power in Social Life.
Thibaut, J. & Kelley, H. H. — early variations of social exchange theory.
Emerson, R. M. — the theory of social exchange; power and dependence.
Lévi-Strauss, C. — Social Anthropology, Collège de France.
Gouldner, A. (1960) — the norm of reciprocity.
Simmel, G. (1950); Malinowski, B. (1926); Mauss, M. (1950/1990) — reciprocity in anthropology and sociology.
Durkheim, É. (1933) — society as sui generis.
Polanyi, K. et al. (1957) — reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange.
Samuelson, P. (1970) — on the competitive price system.
Berry, L. L. (1983) — relationship marketing.
Grönroos, C. (1994) — redefinition of relationship marketing.
Berry, L. L. & Parasuraman, A. (1991) — relationship marketing in services.
Dwyer, F. R., Schurr, P. H. & Oh, S. (1987) — developing buyer–seller relationships.
Morgan, R. M. & Hunt, S. D. (1994) — the commitment–trust theory.
Alderson, W. (1965); Kotler, P. (1972) — exchange as the basis of marketing.
Skinner, B. F. — behaviourism, underlying Homans’ propositions.
Wilkinson, I. — bases of power in the distribution channel.

Retail technology & industry data

CB Insights — AI start-up funding, 2013–2018.
Ardjmand, E. — Assistant Professor of Analytics Systems, Ohio University.
Deloitte — Developing a comprehensive perspective on retail metrics.
Kissmetrics — Starbucks customer lifetime value report.
Understanding the Apparel Shopper Journey — how consumers shop for apparel in an omnichannel world.
Storefront — survey of global retail professionals on pop-up outcomes.

Loyalty, promotions & consumer research

Edgell Knowledge Network (2012) — benchmark study of 60 retailers’ loyalty programmes.
Accenture (2017) — consumer response to loyalty programmes.
Colloquy (2015) — loyalty programme engagement.
LoyaltyOne — consumer research on fee-based rewards programmes.
Consumer Intelligence Research Partners — Amazon Prime renewal rates.
Cialdini, R. — Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
Rosati, K. — Brand Manager, Apparel Booster, on giveaway prize relevance.
Mishra, A. & Mishra, H. (2011) — bonus packs versus price discounts.
Diamond, W. D. & Sanyal, A. (1990) — gain and loss framing in promotions.
ReferralCandy — referral behaviour statistics.

Quotations belong to their authors and are reproduced for commentary and criticism. Each chapter also lists the works it draws on at its foot.

Contact

For questions about eme or this site:

khalid@alholan.com

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