Customer data or consumer data refers to all personal,
behavioural
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well as the inanimate ph ...
, and
demographic
Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration.
Demographic analy ...
data that is collected by marketing companies and departments from their customer base. To some extent,
data collection
Data collection or data gathering is the process of gathering and measuring information on targeted variables in an established system, which then enables one to answer relevant questions and evaluate outcomes. Data collection is a research com ...
from customers intrudes into
customer privacy
Consumer privacy is information privacy as it relates to the consumers of products and services.
A variety of social, legal and political issues arise from the interaction of the public's potential expectation of privacy and the collection and d ...
, the exact limits to the type and amount of data collected need to be regulated.
The data collected is processed in
customer analytics Customer analytics is a process by which data from customer behavior is used to help make key business decisions via market segmentation and predictive analytics. This information is used by businesses for direct marketing, site selection, and ...
. The data collection is thus aimed at insights into
customer behaviour
Consumer behaviour is the study of individuals, groups, or organisations and all activities associated with the Purchasing, purchase, Utility, use and disposal of goods and services. It encompasses how the consumer's emotions, Attitude (psy ...
(
buying decisions, etc.) and, eventually,
profit maximization
In economics, profit maximization is the short run or long run process by which a firm may determine the price, input and output levels that will lead to the highest possible total profit (or just profit in short). In neoclassical economics, ...
by consolidation and expansion of the customer base.
Customer data may be collected from Internet users through
online survey With the application of probability Sampling (statistics), sampling in the 1930s, surveys became a standard tool for empirical research in social sciences, marketing, and official statistics.
The methods involved in survey data collection are any o ...
s, but also through the recording of user activity through measures such as
click-through
Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of clicks on a specific link to the number of times a page, email, or advertisement is shown. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website, as well ...
and
abandonment rate In marketing, abandonment rate is a term associated with the use of virtual shopping carts. Also known as "shopping cart abandonment". Although shoppers in brick and mortar stores rarely abandon their carts, abandonment of virtual shopping carts is ...
s.
Levels of information
One approach to classifying business customer information starts by distinguishing levels of information into market, organizational, business unit, and individual information. Information may then be further broken down within each level. For example, for private consumers, different levels may include personal
identifying data,
psychographics
Psychographics is defined as "market research or statistics classifying population groups according to psychological variables" The term psychographics is derived from the words "psychological" and "demographics" Two common approaches to psychogr ...
data, transactional (buying) data, demographic, and financial data.
While some data overlaps between business and individual customers, other business-specific data serves a similar role to demographics in the individual consumer context.
See also
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Audience measurement
Audience measurement calculates how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic. The term is someti ...
*
Customer data management Customer data management (CDM) is the ways in which businesses keep track of their customer information and survey their customer base in order to obtain feedback. CDM includes a range of software or cloud computing applications designed to give l ...
*
Customer data integration
Data integration refers to the process of combining, sharing, or synchronizing data from multiple sources to provide users with a unified view.
There are a wide range of possible applications for data integration, from commercial (such as when a ...
*
Customer data platform
A customer data platform (CDP) is a collection of software which creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems. Data is pulled from multiple sources, cleaned and combined to create a single customer profile. ...
*
Customer intelligence
Customer intelligence (CI) as part of business intelligence is the process of gathering information regarding customers, and their details and activities, to build deeper and more effective customer relationship management, customer relationships ...
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Market research
Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers. It involves understanding who they are and what they need. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining com ...
References
Customer relationship management
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