BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF DATABASE MARKETING - A CROSS-INDUSTRY STUDY

This paper analyses perceived barriers to the deployment of database m arketing (DBM) Systems in the financial services, retail and travel in dustries. Cost is perceived as a primary barrier to adoption across th e three industries, However, retail and travel place relatively more i mportance on organisational and strategic barriers to adoption than do financial services organisations, The financial services industry, by contrast, views barriers to DBM deployment as, generally, technical i n nature. We infer that such a view indicates that the future deployme nt of more sophisticated, strategically orientated, DBM systems within the financial services industry will be impeded. Within the retail an d travel industries, use of increasingly sophisticated systems was fou nd to be linked to an increasing recognition of the importance of a va riety of organisational and strategic barriers, and in particular the existence of a database marketing strategy. We infer that the implemen tation of DBM in both retail and travel industries is driven by strate gic issues and, as such, organisations in these industries are general ly more likely to gain competitive advantage from their IT investment than organisations in the financial services industry. (C) 1998 Elsevi er Science Ltd. All rights reserved.