Data Warehouse Design Solutions

3

MARKETING

In Chapter 2, we said that sales drives the business. Marketing, in turn, drives sales. Marketing activities can have broad impact within a company; increasing sales is one obvious impact. But marketing techniques can also be used to focus the way a company sells, and often have profound effects on the products themselves.

The more information available to marketers, the more effective their efforts are. Because of the powerful bottom-line impact marketers can have, their need for information is often the driving force behind a company's initial foray into the world of data warehousing. In this chapter, we will study a diverse set of marketing needs drawn from three industries. We will see how each unique set of requirements can be addressed with the right design.

What Is Known about the Customer?

At the center of all marketing activities is the customer. It is the customer who ultimately buys a product. Marketers work to find potential customers, make their products known to them, stimulate demand, retain existing customers, and sell them additional products.

The activities of a marketing group vary greatly by industry, and even within an industry. One factor that accounts for the difference in approach is the level of knowledge about the customer. If you know a great deal about individual customers, you can learn how to effectively sell your product, and to whom you should be trying to sell it. If you have a large number of unknown customers, you may focus on broader ...