15. The method of claim 9 , further comprising: classifying the merchants into merchant categories based on: item tiers of items sold by the merchants; mean item prices of the items sold by the merchants; and item volumes of the items sold by the merchants.
9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising: determining, from the unit counts, item volumes of the merchants in the itemized data; wherein the profiles of the merchants and the profiles of the customers are further based on the item volumes of the merchants in the itemized data.