Tradeoffs in managing the quality of marketing data

A large majority of work in database marketing deals with what to do with data when it is available. This paper focuses on an aspect of data that has been infrequently examined in the database marketing literature - managing quality of data resources from a profit perspective. The notion that "more is better" often prevails in quality management decisions, with very little consideration, if any, of cost. This paper suggests that such decisions should be driven by consideration of cost-benefit tradeoffs and profit maximization. It specifically addresses data-quality decisions which are relevant in the database marketing area: the time-span covered by and targeted quality levels within datasets. These decisions are routinely made based on satisfying technical and functional requirements. We propose a model that quantifies the benefits and costs associated with these decisions and helps maximize profit. The paper describes the model development, discusses its implications for data-quality management decisions, and highlights its contributions with illustrative examples.