Presenting my research on developing customer profiles

I am at Lancaster University, for the Management Learning conference. First impressions so far are great: a friendly group, and I even met another marketer 😉

I am presenting tomorrow morning on my research into how organisations develop profiles of their customers. My experience is that different employees presented with the same data set about a particular customer may reach different conclusions about the value of that customer. That is, data does not speak for itself.

My work has looked at how these interpretations are influenced by:

• the type of data
• the source of the data
• the job role
• the technology used to process the data
• formal rules
• group norms
• mental schemas, including stereotypes, and
• cognitive filters

I am really looking forward to getting feedback from the other delegates.

And I am also looking forward to seeing other presentations. There is a really interesting range of papers looking at various aspects of knowledge creation and dissemination in organisations. For instance, there is a paper looking at how organisations cope with unforeseeable events. It promises to be a very stimulating event.