Customer Intelligence

Developed from the authors' experience working with firms seeking to build better business intelligence, The Customer Information Wars is concerned with who will own and control information about customers and who will develop the best skills and capabilities to exploit it for competitive advantage. At its core, it attempts to explain why the "age of information" has failed to live up to its own hype of specialization, personalization over homogenization, and consistently satisfying customers. Foreword by Malcolm McDonald xi

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction xv

Part I The Decade of Customer Information Exploitation: 1990–2000 1

Chapter 1 The Concept of Customer Intelligence: From Product to Customer 3

Chapter 2 Achieving an Intelligence Capability: From Data to Knowledge 37

Chapter 3 The Eclipse of Mass Marketing: From Many to One 77

Chapter 4 Achieving Segmentation and Differentiation: From Fuzzy to Focused 105

Part II The Decade of Customer Information Exchange: 2000–2010 129

Chapter 5 The Collapse of Time: From Lapsed to Real 131

Chapter 6 Customer Privacy and Confidentiality: From Surveillance to Permission 155

Chapter 7 Closing the Loop: From Monologue to Dialogue 185

Chapter 8 The New Practice of Marketing: From Selling to Buying 203

Notes 229

Index 237

"Kelly's elegant, jargon-free style and compelling arguments make the work read like a whodunnit..." (Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, March 2006)

"... this book is indispensable" (The Marketer, April 2006)

"it should still prove equally inspiring [as his previous book, Data Warehousing]" (Information Age, April 2006)

"... succeeds in crystallising a radical change in marketing...." (Journal of Direct Data & Digital Marketing Practise, June 2006)

Seán Kelly is an author, lecturer, software engineer and international business consultant who has founded a number of separate businesses in the field of customer intelligence and information exploitation. Seán was formerly head of the European business intelligence division of Sybase Inc. and was a founder of the prestigious Data Warehouse network. His groundbreaking book Data Warehousing: The route to mass customization, published by Wiley in the early 1990s, was a major influence on the tide of business intelligence investment that occurred in the following decade. Seán is now involved in a new enterprise, based in Ireland, that is devoted to customer segmentation and profiling solutions.

Customer Intelligence: From Data to Dialogue outlines clearly how and why ubiquitous information is going to change the world of marketing. It provides an eloquent and balanced perspective that is rooted in a deep understanding of how the marketing process actually works. It combines a thorough knowledge of how information is utilized to create customer profiles with a clear-sighted understanding of how these profiles may be employed in marketing campaigns. The reader is exposed to the vast potential of customer information as well as the reasons why many business leaders have failed to grasp this opportunity. In this landmark book the past is dissected and the future is proclaimed. It is essential reading.