Customer Relationship Management and Knowledge Discovery in Database

Abstract

Customer relationships are increasingly central to business success (Kotler, 1997; Reichheld & Sasser, 1990). Acquiring new customers is five to seven times costlier than retaining existing customers (Kotler, 1997). Simply by reducing customer defections by 5%, a company can improve profits by 25% to 85% (Reichheld & Sasser, 1990). Relationship marketing—getting to know customers intimately by understanding their preferences—has emerged as a key business strategy for customer retention (Dyche, 2002). Internet and related technologies offer amazing possibilities for creating and sustaining ideal customer relationships (Goodhue, Wixom, & Watson, 2002; Ives, 1990; Moorman, Zaltman, & Deshpande, 1992). Internet is not only an important and convenient new channel for promotion, transactions, and business process coordination; it is also a source of customer data (Shaw, Subramaniam, Tan, & Welge, 2001). Huge customer data warehouses are being created using advanced database technologies (Fayyad, Piatetsky-Shapiro, & Smyth, 1996).