Otto's Office Products Is a Large National Company Selling Office

Multiple Choice

Otto's Office Products is a large national company selling office supplies to businesses and everyday consumers. It is compiling an in-house data warehouse in order to identify customers and build relationships with them. The IT department has recommended that Otto's use data mining to build customer profiles and prepare business models to predict future purchasing behaviour. Otto's CEO is not in favour of data mining, and argues that it shouldn't be used. Which of the following statements, if true, would support the CEO's argument for not using data mining?

A) Data mining can build profiles of Otto's best customers and then use behavioural characteristics to identify new customers.
B) Data mining is helpful to salespeople as it can identify customers that would benefit from an individual sales call, or provide them with buying reminders for particular products.
C) Data mining can be used to track online behaviour of the customers by the use of cookies, and identify customer interests and business needs.
D) A privacy paradox exists whereby mining personal information is intrusive, but also leads to better targeting.
E) Data mining can help spot trends and patterns in customer purchases, and enable the marketing department to shape advertising around these trends.