Knowledge creation in marketing: the role of predictive analytics

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of predictive analytics, summarize how it is impacting knowledge creation in marketing, and suggest future developments in marketing and predictive analytics for both organizations and researchers.Design/methodology/approach – Survival in a knowledge‐based economy is derived from the ability to convert information to knowledge. To do so, researchers and managers increasingly are relying on the field of predictive analytics. Data mining identifies and confirms relationships between explanatory and criterion variables. Predictive analytics uses confirmed relationships between variables to predict future outcomes. The predictions are most often values suggesting the likelihood a particular behavior or event will take place in the future.Findings – Data mining and predictive analytics are increasingly popular because of the substantial contributions they can make in converting information to knowledge. Marketing is among the most frequent applicati...