Chapter 6 Running Case Assignment: Improving Decision Making: Redesigning the Customer Database

Software skills: Database design; querying and reporting
Business skills: Customer profiling

Dirt Bikes U.S.A. sells primarily through its distributors. It maintains a small customer database with the following data: customer name, address (street, city, state, zip code), telephone number, model purchased, date of purchase, and distributor. You can find the database on the Laudon Web site for Chapter 6. These data are collected by its distributors when they make a sale and are then forwarded to Dirt Bikes. Dirt Bikes would like to be able to market more aggressively to its customers. The Marketing Department would like to be able to send customers e-mail notices of special racing events and of sales on parts. It would also like to learn more about customers’ interests and tastes: their ages, years of schooling, another sport in which they are interested, and whether they attend dirt bike racing events. Additionally, Dirt Bikes would like to know whether customers own more than one motorcycle. (Some Dirt Bikes customers own two or three motorcycles purchased from Dirt Bikes U.S.A. or other manufacturer.) If a motorcycle was purchased from Dirt Bikes, the company would like to know the date of purchase, model purchased, and distributor. If the customer owns a non–Dirt Bikes motorcycle, the company would like to know the manufacturer and model of the other motorcycle (or motorcycles) and the distributor from whom the customer purchased that motorcycle.

• Redesign Dirt Bikes’s customer database so that it can store and provide the information needed for marketing. You will need to develop a design for the new customer database and then implement that design using database software. Consider using multiple tables in your new design. Populate each new