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Several years ago, authors Don Peppers and Martha Rogers described a world of customized products and services in their best-selling book, "Enterprise One to One," which they followed with several other books like "One to One Fieldbook" and "One to One Manager."

Their ideas were revolutionary. We were all familiar with personalized direct mail letters that have our name, account information, previous purchase information and other tidbits sprinkled throughout the package. But Peppers and Rogers described a world that went well beyond mere customized marketing messages.

Imagine if every product or service you purchased was customized to meet your individual needs. With your every wish at your local retailer's command, why would you ever consider shopping anywhere else or switching to a competitor? Brand loyalty would be pervasive.

Of course, a company that customized first would win the minds and hearts of its customers and block any would-be competitors from encroaching on its turf.

However, true mass one-to-one customization on the scale Peppers and Rogers proposed was difficult to put into practice. Part of the challenge 10 years ago was technological limitations. But today customized products and services seem to be everywhere.

For example, just this morning when I dropped by my neighborhood Starbucks, I was confronted by a display promoting its new customized gift cards.

It's a brilliant idea. A visit to Starbucks' Web site at starbucks.com makes creating a custom card an easy process.

You begin by choosing a card and then adding both a background color and a pattern (there are five of each to choose from). Next up is your choice of a drink type (espresso beverage, Tazo tea, etc.), and drink size. You then choose a "starter" (regular strength, decaf, etc.), followed by the number of espresso shots, special flavors (including vanilla, hazelnut, etc.), milk options and the type of drink (latte, mocha, etc.).

These choices are reflected in a customized artistic design on your card along with a personalized message (including three font choices) made up of approximately 40 letters on two lines.

Another example of customization is the Toyota Scion compact car with hundreds of options to choose from.

A visit to Toyota's Web site, scion.com, allows you to "craft your ride" and choose from several layers of options, including the body style to a customized interior and paint job. As you make your choices, your customized car appears magically before you on screen.

Nike also recently launched the Nike ID with a seemingly infinite combination of customized footwear options to choose from. I visited Nike's Web site to research the ordering process for a man's running shoe, the Nike Shox Azulikeit iD.

I started with a blank shoe and was able to select among several options including size, the color of each component piece, a design element or my name laser-etched into the side. Why would I ever shop anywhere else?

Peppers and Rogers (pepperandrogers.com) suggest to do the following to make the shift to one-to-one marketing: Identify your customers, differentiate your customers, interact with your customers and customize some aspect of your enterprise's behavior toward your customer, based on that customer's needs and value. The trick is to maximize your ROC, or return on customer.

It's no surprise that the word custom is part of the word customer.

Sacco is the vice president of marketing at Kirtland Federal Credit Union and an adjunct professor at UNM Anderson Schools of Management and Webster University.