Doc,
As I wrote the research paper mentioned by the first blog post (written by a colleague) i feel obliged to provide a (quite long) answer
That paper "VRM : a new paradigm for customer relationship ? Foundations, Principles, Opportunities, Limits" is part of a special issue on "the future of marketing" from a scientific journal "Decisions Marketing"
Honestly, you won't find anything new. The paper draws heavily on this mailing-list discussions (with cited reference of course), your book and papers on VRM (also properly referenced). And the final draft was written nearly a year ago (long publication delay...)
What I added is an analysis of the french and european laws (and law projects) on cookies and tracking. And the results from a serie of face-to-face interviews (with customers and managers) and one focus group with customers during which I explained some of the VRM principles and gathered the reaction of "average joe's" (and jane's). It appears they especially wanted to cut some ongoing one-way 'conversations' (aka direct email communication) with companies, and were particularily eager to try 'intentcasting'.
All in all, it made sense : what consumers want (privacy, control) is what the law projects pleads for, and thus this is what companies should do in order to win customers and avoid sanctions.
Then, a couple of examples follow about companies (Personal clouds mainly) and experimentations (Kaplan's MesInfos) starting to offer this kind of answers under the flag 'VRM'.
It concludes with the link between trust and loyalty (in french, both those words - confiance, fidélité- share a common latin root -fidei-, which gives an excellent final sentence)
There may be more french research papers on VRM-related issues, as the first results from MesInfos are going public soon (check for Christophe Benavent, Maria Mercanti-Guérin, Caroline Lancelot-Miltgen, Thomas Stenger, Andréa Micheaux)
There is also strong support from the industry through the PICOM (a research center on retailing funded by retailers as a venture with Lille University). They funded my research (I say so to be absolutely transparent, but actually they just worte a check and let me do what I wanted, they justed wanted the results).
One of the CTO from a retail company from the PICOM told me that "Data may be the fuel of the 21st century economy, but trust is definitely the engine"... (a sentence that stroke me so much that I tweeted it, which I do not often do)
As for the second blog post, I do not know Sébastien Gibier (Bepleez.com), and I should perhaps have included his company in my paper. I just noticed he graduated from the University I'm teaching in...
Sylvain Willart