Introduction

The database Marketing is the process of building, maintaining and utilizing the databases (on the customer, products,
suppliers and resellers) for the purpose of contacting, transacting and building relationships. The database marketing is an
interactive approach to marketing, which uses the individually addressable marketing media and channels such as mail, telephone
and the sales force.
Features
The salient features of database marketing include:
ü Extending help to a company to reach its target audience;
ü Stimulating the customer demand; and
ü Recording and maintaining an electronic database of the customer, and all commercial contacts, so that the business firm
could improve their future contacts and devise a more realistic marketing strategy.

Advantages of Database Marketing

The one-on-one marketing, which directs the customized offerings to individual customers, has provided an additional
thrust to database marketing. It has employed the database to capture the interactions between a firm and its customers at each
point of time and utilizes the data analysis to search for patterns in these interactions. These patterns provide the most attractive
potential customers besides providing clues in customizing the products, pricing and promotions of a product. When utilized in the
proper manner, the database marketing could provide insights into the customer’s buying behavior across the product categories,
so that the companies could devise their programmes and plans to the “whole customer”, then the customer seen only through the
narrow view of their own products and brands.
Disadvantages of Database Marketing
• The cost incurred in setting up the software and hardware requirements has made the database marketing expensive in its
establishment.
• The database often demands new skills and organizations from new analytical and decision-making skills in sales and marketing to
a revamped information system organization that could support the entirely new class of users.
• The database marketing depends on the data quality. While the observational data is powerful, the corrupted observational data
could be ‘powerful misleading’. The quality also depends on the quality of analysis and the extent to which the databases are
linked.
• Till now, the database marketing has been primarily used as a tactical tool.

DATABASE MARKETING ITS ADVANTAGES

AND DISADVANTAGES
BY
Miss. P. PIRAKATHEESWARI, Lecturer in Commerce,
Sri Sarada College for Women (Autonomous), Salem – 16.