Reference no: EM132816534

1. You are seeking venture capital for a new direct marketing company start-up. Your new company, should you acquire funding, will sell diamond jewelry using database marketing strategies. The potential investors have several questions regarding your business plan:

a) What do you consider to be the key pieces of data that should be captured for all new customer orders?

b) How might you utilize census level data and what types would be beneficial for targeting efforts given your product has a high price point?

c) Could you use credit data such as that from Equifax to append to your file to assist in determining a prospects ability to pay for product and why or why not?

d) It is now five years later and you are running a very successful diamond jewelry business. You wish to expand into gourmet foods. What types of enhancement data elements might you consider appending to the customer file in order to fully leverage your current customer base for this new business?

2. The zip code level variable "Home Value" for the Jones customer record reveals a value of $335,649. Does this value mean this is what customer Jones' home is worth? Explain.

3. Would the census tract level variable denoting "Home Value" for the Jones customer record be a better estimate of how wealthy customer Jones is than the zip code level variable mentioned above in question #3 and why or why not?

4. You are about to promote an expensive jewelry catalogue promotion to your current set of customers. On your database you have individual level income data (that you appended to the customer file) as well as census level data revealing the average income of the zip code that each customer lives in. You only have 50% coverage of individual level income data. That is, when you bought and appended the income data, it only covered 50% of the names on your file. However, you have 100% coverage of the census level data. How do you proceed to select the best and most names from the database for this promotion if having an income over $100,000 is the single most important selection criteria?

5. You are the product manager at a major vacation and travel direct marketing company. It has been two years since the enhancement data residing on your customer file has been updated. Your manager wants to postpone the updating for yet another year. You wanted to use this enhancement data in order to select names with no children for an upcoming "couples only" vacation package. Do you have any concerns with the use of this data for targeting purposes and why or why not?