Data analysis across various media: Data fusion, direct marketing, clickstream data and social media

Abstract

As the volume and diversity of digitally stored data keeps growing, the importance for the business to create a holistic picture of the customer continues to grow. In this paper, we discuss the possibilities available to researchers with four different streams of data. First, we discuss data fusion, merging of proprietary databases with market research data, which enables appending attitudinal data to customer behaviour. Secondly, best practices in direct marketing leverage analysis of customer response patterns to provide the right offer to the right customer at the right moment. Thirdly, analysing internet usage data allows many opportunities for small-scale, agile marketing pilots. And finally, social media are discussed, one of the newer opportunities to collect data about customer sentiments that relies heavily on text mining analytics.