Assignment:
To provide some background to the video case, REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.) is an American consumers' cooperative, selling outdoor recreation gear and sporting goods. REI sells to its members through an E-commerce site, hardcopy catalogs, and through 90 brick and mortar stores located in 27 states. REI is the largest consumer co-op in the U.S and faces competition from many other sporting goods retailers.
Based on Laudon and Laudon (2012), "in order to better understand and serve its three million active co-op members and customers, REI launched an initiative to build a data warehouse containing many different types of information about its customers. REI needs to know precisely what they do in the outdoors. With the help of IBM, REI hopes its data warehouse will allow them to identify and organize all of the ways that each customer interacts with the company, including what they bought online or retail outlets, whether they attended special training sessions for equipment and outdoor activities, or items they returned.
REI uses IBM data warehousing technology to achieve its vision of understanding what its customers want, and how they want to interact with the company. REI also deployed IBM's DB2 9 Viper technology to run REI's marketing campaigns. REI's site will recognize its members when they log in, allowing them to serve up content customized towards individual users" (p. 4).
What is a data warehouse and why is REI building one?
Describe some of the marketing strategies that REI's data warehouse will allow them to use. Would these have been possible before the data warehouse was built?
What are some of the risks or concerns surrounding the creation of a data warehouse?
Why do you think REI chose to work with IBM's data warehouse technology?
2 to 3 pages; 2 outside resources
Required Readings
REI. (2009). REI builds a smart sporting warehouse with DB2. [Video file].
SASsoftware. (2011). Manage the data deluge with data mining and predictive analytics. [Video file].
SASsoftware. (2011). Manage all unstructured data with SAS text analytics. [Video file].