Abstract:

All businesses are faced with gathering information from various sources to enable decision-making to be carried out for the profitability of the organisation as a result of analysing the data. The data can be very varied in its origin. Tor instance, farmers may gather information on the weather; shipping companies require data on the tides and waterways, and airlines want information on load factors and logistics. Marketing companies like Lever Brothers are concerned with obtaining data on their business environment. In this case this is the market place. What does a marketing company need to know about trading conditions and what data is immediately available to it.