Assign Business Entity To Hidden Variable?

Question. Say for example if i have a business entity -> Customer, which has customerId, customerName and customerType. I have created an asp:Hidden Variable hdnCustomer to runat="server"

If i wanted to serialize the value of the customer business entity (in the code behind) to the hdnCustomer then how would i do that?

// Psudo code
Collection customerList = new Collection();
customerList = BusinessAccess.GetCustomerList();
hdnCustomer = serialize and assign the value of 'customerList' to hdnCustomer;
...
...
// Later on a select index change of one of the drop down lists

inside the event handler for the drop down list

{
Collection customerList = new Collection();
customerList = deserialize the value from hdnCustomer
int a = Convert.ToInt32(ddlDropDown.SelectedValue);
foreach(a in customerList)
{
// Do something
}
}