Chapter 1 - Wilson Marketing Research

The proposition that the whole of the organisation should be driven by a goal of serving and satisfying customers in a manner that enables the organisation’s financial and strategic objectives to be achieved.

A non-obvious understanding about customers and markets, which, if acted upon, has the potential to benefit both the organisation and the customer.

The major growth in information available in a wide range of formats from a wide range of sources. This growth has principally resulted from improvements in the capabilities and speeds of computers.

A term to describe the significant volume and variety of data available to organisations and the increased frequency in which they are generated.

A manual or computerised source of data relevant to marketing decision-making about an organisation’s customers.

Using a combination of different sources of data where the weaknesses in some sources are counterbalanced with the strengths of others.

An abbreviated title for the term web logs, meaning frequent, chronological publications of personal thoughts and ideas.

The collection, analysis and communication of information undertaken to assist decision-making in marketing.

The individual pieces of information held in a database (e.g. a person’s name, gender or date of birth). These elements mean little independently, but when combined they provide information on a customer or group of customers.

Text files placed on a user’s computer by web retailers in order to identify the user when they next visit the website.

Online social networks allow individuals to communicate with one another, construct a public or semi-public profile of themselves, as well as share a variety of content.

A community of individuals who interact online, focusing on a particular interest or simply to communicate.

Online material, such as comments, profiles, photographs and videos, that is produced by the end user.

Organisations that sell off-the-shelf data files listing names, characteristics and contact details of consumers or organisations.

Organisations that gather demographic and lifestyle information about consumers and combine it with postal address information. They take this base information and use it to segment an organisation’s database of customers into different lifestyle and income groups.