IN AMERICA alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicitedadverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. That means the most amount of marketing money was spent not on drumming up business,but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters.
This might, in the modern, privacy-free world of sliced and diced web-browsinganalysis, come as something of a surprise. Marketing departments gather data on potential customers, spend fortunes on software to analyze their spending habits and painstakingly “segment” the data to adopt their campaigns to appeal to specific groups. And still they get it almost completely wrong.
A group of researchers at IBM’s Almaden Research Centre in San Jose, California,however, is here to help. According to Eben Haber, the group’s leader, the problem is that firms are trying to understand their customers by studying their “demographics” (age, sex, marital status, dwelling place, income and so on) and their existing buying habits. That approach, he believes, is flawed. What they really need is a way to discover the “deep psychological profiles” of their customers, including their personalities, values and needs. And heand his team think they can provide it.

文章解析：
IN AMERICA alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both thephysical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who receivedunsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. That means the most amount of marketing money was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters.
單就美國而言，去年在“直接營銷”—-實體及電子形式的各種垃圾郵件上的花費達到了1700億美元。然而那些通過郵寄方式“被廣告”的人中只有3%最終產生了購買行為。這意味著營銷用的大多數資金沒有用在招攬生意上，而是花在了招人討厭，產生垃圾以及充塞垃圾郵件過濾器上。

詞匯突破：unsolicitedadverts 不請自來的廣告Landfill 垃圾Spam (非索要的)電郵廣告Filters 過濾器drumming up business 招攬生意
This might, in the modern, privacy-free world of sliced and dicedweb-browsing analysis, come as something of a surprise. Marketing departments gather data on potential customers, spend fortunes on software to analyze theirspending habits and painstakingly “segment” the data to adopt their campaignsto appeal to specific groups. And still they get it almost completely wrong.
在這個網頁瀏覽受到切塊式分析，毫無隱私的現代世界里，這或許有些讓人意外。營銷部門收集了潛在客戶數的數據，并在分析其消費習慣的軟件上投下巨資，還煞費苦心地將切分數據，并據此調整自己的營銷活動來吸引特定的客戶群。但他們幾乎完全錯了。

詞匯突破：
diced 切成小塊privacy-free 沒有隱私painstakingly 煞費苦心地
A group of researchers at IBM’s Almaden Research Centre in San Jose, California, however, is here to help. According to Eben Haber, the group’s leader, theproblem is that firms are trying to understand their customers by studying their “demographics” (age, sex, marital status, dwelling place, income and so on) and their existing buying habits. That approach, he believes, is flawed.What they really need is a way to discover the “deep psychological profiles” of their customers, including their personalities, values and needs. And he and his team think they can provide it.
但是IBM位于加州圣何塞的阿爾馬登研究中心的一組研究人員給我們提供了幫助。據該小組的組長埃本•哈伯稱，問題在于企業試圖通過研究其客戶的“人口統計資料”(年齡，性別，婚姻狀況，居住地點，收入等等)去了解他們及其目前的購買習慣。他認為這種方式是有缺陷的。營銷部門真正需要的是一種能發現其客戶“深層心理檔案”途徑，包括客戶的性格，價值觀及需求。哈伯及其團隊認為自己可以提供這個途徑。
文章結構：前面兩段其實都是引入，第三段才是全文的重心