Educating Buyers

San Francisco-based Active Research today launches a market research tool in the clothes of an online product-recommendation engine.

The Active Buyer’s Guide (https://www.activeresearch.com) will hold the hands of consumers shopping for products or services such as computers, video cameras and mutual funds. After a series of questions that ask the consumer to balance the trade-offs of features and price, the guide returns with recommended products.

The company plans to team up with portal Web sites that would license the engine and perhaps link with “shopbots,” intelligent agents that scour the Web for the best price on a product. While customers get unbiased recommendations, the hosting site gets another tool to keep customers on the site.

Active Research receives a cut of any advertising revenue or customer-referral commission, but that’s not where the real money comes from, said Tom DuBois, chief executive of the 10-month-old firm.

Active Research will collect the preferences of consumers and then resell the information to manufacturers, who will use it to design next-generation products.