"Customers don't really want choice. They want someone to know what they want and give it to them," says Peppers. "When I see an ad saying come and look at thousands of couches in our sofa warehouse, I don't find that attractive, I find that a wearying prospect, I want to say 'Here are the couches I have in my house, here is my price range, show me the 50 I might like.' ."

Companies are fighting increasingly hard to attract new customers but the hard sell puts people off, says Peppers an ex advertising man whose vision is of a world where junk mail no longer thumps hopelessly through our letter boxes and where companies no longer see the point of screaming their wares from every billboard and TV screen. "All these companies are shouting 'I'm better, I'm better, I'm better'. They all say that and they say it to everyone," says Peppers. All this will be rethought in what he calls "the interactive age".

These changes are already on the way - they are already visible on the world wide web where Amazon Books www.amazon.com, one of the most successful of Peppers "one to one" enterprises operates, selling millions of books. An Amazon customer will automatically be told about a book that might interest them based on the information they choose to give the company.