In Forbes magazine on February 17, you may have read about how Target determined that a girl was pregnant and sent coupons to her home, surprising her family.
While some find the story creepy, and others alarming, the larger question for people involved in sales and marketing is this:
What are you going to do about it?
Some uses of this data analysis technology are intrusive and pose ethical questions, and may cause us all to doing our weekly shopping with cash (first ensuring that the bills are unmarked, of course) as a sales or marketing professional, the reality is that the technology to predict consumer purchasing behavior exists and is being used by your competitors.
Target statistical wizard Andrew Pole explained his methods:
As
[his] computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a "pregnancy prediction" score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/">http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/</a></blockquote><br> </p>
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<p>Setting pregnancy aside and talking about aviation, there is no shortage of data.</p>
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<p>There are scrupulous records kept by every aircraft in the U.S., and of aircraft in other jurisdictions by the regulating agency. There are records of ownership, maintenance, and even records of travel for instrument flight plans.</p>
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<p>There are also records of pilots, A & P mechanics, and other licensed professions related to aviation.</p>
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<p>There are numerous professional organizations, like NBAA, AOPA, NARA, and EAA that keep detailed records on their members, as well as results of surveys and other research.</p>
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<p>The data is out there, the question is, which pieces of data can you get your hands on, that could be a predictor for a need for your product or service? Perhaps its time to do a bit of statistical wizardry of your own.</p>
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<p>ABCI has added a statistician to the IT team, and has begun to develop various statistical analysis models. Let's talk about how we can find the right set of prospective customers!d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);.
