Types Of Data

We Use B.A.D. Data

Regardless of the analytical objective, each project will start with a review of specific marketing objectives and associated priorities. The next step will be to assess the data that either is available or could be made available for the project. The process of developing an effective analytical result usually requires a large and diverse set of information. While it is impossible to 100% accurately model (and therefore predict) human purchase behavior, there are many, many different characteristics that can help account for differences in consumer behavior. In fact, the best analytical projects are based on B.A.D. data.

Behavioral Data

Behavioral Data involves metrics of customer interactions and performance with a specific company. Typical variables include total sales to date, total sales within the last six months, total number of returned items, returned items as a percent of shipped items, average dollar sales, average time between sales, percent of sales at discounted price…the list goes on and on. Company-specific information about customer behavior is often considered to be the key determinant of future behavior.

Attitudinal Data

Attitudinal Data emphasizes the nature of the customer’s overall values and specific relationship with an individual company. Not all of a company’s customers will feel the same way about the company. Some examples include product quality, breadth of the product lines, level of service, price, convenience/availability, etc.

Defining the customer in terms of how they feel about a company helps to understand why the customer does business with them and also yields some understanding of how they position the company against the competition. This is the most direct approach to understanding the underlying value proposition from the customer’s side. The best way to collect customer attitudinal information is to survey customers.

Demographic Data

Demographic Data generally includes variables such as age, income, gender, years of education, presence of children, occupation, home value, ethnicity, marital status, etc. While there are several ways to acquire customer demographic information, the most common approach is to purchase demographic enhancement data from an outside supplier. The supplier matches your customer list against a large compiled consumer database using name, address, phone number, etc., and then appends the demographic data from the compiled database onto your file. Because compiled databases and matching technologies are not perfect, you will never obtain demographic data for every customer. Usually, “hit rates” will range from 80% to 50%. Records that do not receive this type of demographic data can be “backfilled” (or approximated) by appending geo-demographic data which are usually averages for the area in which they live (average age, income, home value, etc.).

Online Data

Online Data including information from the Web site’s log files, shopping cart, e-mail, on-site search, keywords and other advertising/referral programs, third party syndicated data (e.g., Coremetrics, HomeScan Online, Hitwise)… The number and types of online channels/data sources (e.g., Mobile phones, podcasts) keeps on growing, and DSA is committed to staying abreast with and making the best use of each new source of data.