Correspondence: Leonard J Paas, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Marketing, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, Room 2E-43, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: lpaas@feweb.vu.nl

¹is employed as an associate professor in Marketing at VU University in Amsterdam (the Netherlands). He has extensive experience in academia and business. His topics of interest are marketing research, statistics, international marketing and database marketing. He has published papers in, among others, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Marketing Letters, the Journal of Economic Psychology, the Journal of Database Marketing, the Journal of Financial Services Marketing, the Service Industries Journal, and the Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing.

Received 30 March 2009; Revised 30 March 2009.

Abstract

In this paper, qualitative research is conducted to gain insight into the current application and potential of database marketing in a newly emerging African economy, Tanzania. It is found that database marketing applications in Tanzania are currently limited, but that there is potential. The most promising industries are banking, insurance firms and the mobile phone sector. However, the development of database marketing in Tanzania may be hindered by lack of suitable data warehouses, lack of statistical knowledge, and insufficient knowledge on the application of client data and statistical output for marketing applications. The paper discusses the implications for Western firms.