Discount merchandisers: "Know thy customer" by effectively using retail database

The retail industry, including mass retailers, continues to lag behind in applying modern database technology that would help get them up to speed with "customer thinking." So the time has come for mass retailers to commit themselves to database development and marketing in order to move a step ahead of their customers. Database marketing and management, whether outsourced or performed within the company, allows marketers to continuously update customer profiles and respond to a customer's specific needs. Retailers - like discount merchandisers - will benefit enormously if they open themselves to a database marketing philosophy that melds sound business sense with specific customer knowledge and packages it as a measurable, controlled and sustained system of growing customers as well as sales.