Ordinarily, web analytics depends on cookie record identifiers placed by vendors in consumer devices and/or consumer registration information maintained by the vendor in order to track certain activities of a particular consumer across a plurality of interactive visits. Nowadays, if a consumer deletes the cookie in her computer, there may be no practical means to tie her next visit with an earlier one.
An individual may employ different devices from one time to another such as when she uses her home computer for a first visit then her employer's computer for a subsequent one. She may also visit the same vendor using a cell phone, a goods or services dispensing kiosk, or the vendor's brick and mortar store. The individual can use a credit card to make a purchase through one of these devices and use the same card at an automated teller machine (an ATM). Moreover, several individuals may use the same device loaded with a single successively updated cookie. Many catalog vendor sites do not admit cookies. A single vendor can be visited by a single consumer using a single device such as a mobile phone through different disintegrated channels such as the vendor's website supporting mobile phone access, and the vendor's telephonic support line.
Unless each consumer provides with every use of a device a clear identification such as a registration number, the analytic systems either miss a great deal of information about a particular consumer's activities, or combine information about unrelated persons.
There is a need for some identifying process or system that can track the behavior of a consumer over many visits using a variety of potentially disparate devices, through a variety of potentially disparate channels where the consumer does not provide a clear identification with each visit.