ABSTRACT
In today’s highly competitive business world, all entrepreneurs and managers in every part of the globe, irrespective of the type and magnitude of the business, must make numerous decisions related to so many business issues. Among the most significant of these decisions are customer related and marketing related. This chapter provides a general introduction about the importance of data in managerial decision-making, including the definitions of core concepts viz., data analytics, business analytics, marketing and marketing management, customer and consumer, along with the significance of marketing and customer analytics. It describes the marketing management process, which consists of critical stages such as research, segmentation, targeting, and positioning, designing the marketing mix, marketing implementation, and control and analytics importance at every stage of marketing management. The four highly contrasting tasks making customer analytics different from the regular statistical analysis is that customer analytics is more customer-focused at the individual customer level, and longitudinal, behavioral, and attitudinal in nature.
