How Does Target Know So Much About Its Customers? Utilizing Customer Analytics to Make Marketing Decisions

Every time shoppers make a purchase at a store or browse a Web site, customer behavior is tracked, analyzed, and perhaps shared with other businesses. Target Corporation is a leader in analyzing vast amounts of data to identify buying patterns, improve customer satisfaction, predict future trends, select promotional strategies, and increase revenue. This case highlights a situation in which a teen girl unexpectedly received a maternity-specific mailer from Target and discusses the positive and negative aspects of this retailer's data mining program. The case focuses on the types of data needed to identify changes in consumer behavior, privacy issues that arise with data mining, and how customer analytics supports marketing decisions.