Database Marketing: Analyzing and Managing Customers

Abstract

The confluence of more powerful information technology, advances in method- ology, and management’s demand for an approach to marketing that is both effective and accountable, has fueled explosive growth in the application of database marketing. In order to position the field for future advances, we believe this is an opportune time to take stock of what we know about database marketing and identify where the knowledge gaps are. To do so, we have drawn on the rich and voluminous repository of research on database marketing. Our emphasis on research – academic, practitioner, and joint research – is driven by three factors. First, as we hope the book demonstrates, research has produced a great deal of knowledge about database marketing, which until now has not been collected and examined in one volume. Second, research is fundamentally a search for truth, and to enable future advances in the field, we think it is crucial to separate what is known from what is conjectured. Third, the overlap between research and practice is particularly seamless in this field. Database marketing is a meritocracy – if a researcher can find a method that offers promise, a company can easily test it versus their current practice, and adopt the new method if it proves itself better. We have thus attempted to produce a research-based synthesis of the field – a unified and comprehensive treatment of what research has taught us about the methods and tools of database marketing. Our goals are to enhance research, teaching, and the practice of database marketing.