Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest

In today’s economy, marketers have been facing two challenging trends: fierce competition between companies offering essentially similar products, and dealing with customers that are increasingly informed and demanding, but less and less loyal. Under these conditions, it has become imperative for managers and for marketing professionals to invest in business intelligence in order to find patterns in the consumers ’ behavior that could predict their future buying decisions. In this report we have presented how Decision Support Systems, data analysis and customer segmentation can help companies to know their customers better in order to predict (and influence) their future actions. At the same time, we have argued that Business Intelligence should meet psychology and neurology halfway, and accept that there is a very high emotional subconscious component that produces a high degree of unpredictability in consumers ’ behavior