A Please read the Asking the Customer by Asking the Database

Solution

The Forbes business model relies heavily on advertising to supplement revenue from paid subscriptions, so it is constantly looking for ways to help its advertisers reach Forbes readers more effectively. Anything it can do to understand its customers better can be passed along to its advertisers.

Kodak can use its customer database to ensure its getting the right products to the right marketplace and therefore into customers’ hands faster and more efficiently. Customer data helped Kodak successfully transition from making a photographic film to becoming a leading provider of imaging technology products and services, including digital photography.

Decisions would have been much more difficult to make and probably less accurate had either company failed to compile customer data over the years.

Whether a person is a subscriber or registered Web site visitor, Forbes has some knowledge of that individual’s demographics, values, and lifestyles as well as how that person has interacted with Forbes over the years. These details help Forbes’s advertisers target their campaigns more precisely and also help Forbes publications increase their circulation.

Kodak used to make decisions in a top-down manner, with annual budgets for broadcast, print, direct mail, online, email, and other marketing programs based on the previous year’s spending. Campaigns were built around fictional customer “personas” that were “more aspirational than real,” such as the 25- to 35-year-old suburban soccer mom with two children. Kodak has been able to replace its crude customer “personas” with detailed in-depth profiles of customer groups and buying patterns based on actual data. Kodak can measure the actual effect of promotional offers, customer segmentation, and messaging across all of its channels.

1. Are there any ethical issues raised by mining customer databases? Explain your answer

The biggest ethical issue is related to the privacy as most of the companies collect the different types of information from the customers without informing them such as name, age, marital status and so on