Data data everywhere – and not a byte of use?

Describes the research and findings of a project aimed at how UK companies use customer information in their marketing today. Today’s technologies allow companies to collect enormous volumes of data and manipulate it in many different ways to bring out otherwise unforeseen areas of knowledge. This can be vital for marketers trying to provide better service to the customer than their competition. But is it in general use? The research was carried out via an e‐mail questionnaire using a sample of companies to gain a broad view of marketing today, and was followed up with interviews of half the original sample and finally writing three case studies of diverse companies. Owing to the small sample size, no definitive answers can be given without further research, but the trend was towards implementation of customer relations management (CRM) practices and more take up of the Internet as a channel to market.