L ong before focus groups or marketing surveys or loyalty programmes, businesses knew their customers because they saw them face to face.
The corner shop owner knew who liked a particular brand of jam and kept it in stock for them. He knew when people tended to come in and kept his shop open to accommodate them.
Stuart Aitken, the chief executive of Dunnhumby USA, a leading force in the growing field of data analytics, says he keeps this vision in mind as he uses the latest technology to provide companies with insights about their customers. “This is back to basics,” he says. “What we’re seeing is that businesses have driven out costs, they’ve got the scale in their operations, but they’ve forgotten who their customer is. What we do is allow businesses to reconnect with their customers, to become the corner store on a large scale.”