The Big Data-Driven Business

Chapter 2The Evolution of the Customer-Focused, Data-Driven Business

Having a strong focus on customers is nothing new. Neither is using data to better understand your customers. In fact, companies that have combined these approaches are among the standouts in business history.

In the late nineteenth century, two entrepreneurs, a thousand miles apart, established famed department stores built on a philosophy of serving the customer. In Chicago in 1862, Marshall Field founded the company that would become his eponymous department store. At Marshall Field's, the term customer and customizing the experience of each buyer were core to the business model. Field implemented two guiding principles at his store: “Give the lady what she wants” and “The customer is always right,” according to Donald L. Miller's City of the Century (Simon & Schuster, 1996).

In those days when there were no databases or computers, it was difficult to measure exactly how well Field's stores lived up to those two principles with individual customers. But the old-fashioned ledger demonstrated the success of Marshall Field. By 1894, Field was successful enough to pledge $1 million (roughly $25 million in today's money) to the founding of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Across the country in Philadelphia, John Wanamaker founded his own eponymous store in 1861. Like Field, the customer experience was central to the business model. Wanamaker eliminated haggling (he is said to have invented the ...