The new multivariate jungle: Computer intensive methods in database marketing

The advent of powerful computers and relatively inexpensive disk storage has had a profound effect on marketing and market research. In particular, companies are now able to construct very large databases containing information about their customers. However, companies are now faced with the problem of how to use these vast sources of information to their advantage. Two typical problems discussed in this paper are data fusion and selecting those likely to respond to a particular marketing campaign, for example, a particular mailshot. Such problems are difficult to solve exactly for all but the smallest of problem instances due to their complexity. There are a number of computer‐based heuristic methods which have been successfully applied to problems outside the marketing domain, but for which there are relatively few examples of successful application within marketing. These techniques are reviewed in this paper and their application to large marketing databases discussed.

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