The value of customer and prospect databases as a corporate asset Available to Purchase

This paper investigates how retailers can obtain value from their customer and prospect databases. In the current fickle economic climate it has never been so important for organisations to be able to provide added‐value insights into their immediate and longer‐term development. Total DM conducted a telephone and e‐mail survey amongst marketing professionals from or representing the UK’s top 1,000 companies to determine different sector’s ability to obtain short‐term customer acquisition costs and longer‐term ongoing customer profitability. Secondary research was then performed to measure data richness for each industry. This measure took different factors into account, including penetration of loyalty. Retailers were found to be the overall winners at extending commercial value from their customer and prospect databases. This was greatly influenced by the large volume of customer information potentially available to retailers. The survey concluded that it was individual retailers who were able to exploit their databases to the full who would be able to win investor confidence.