List five reasons for the growing popularity of data mining in the business world

What will be an ideal response?

• More intense competition at the global scale driven by customers' ever-changing needs and wants in an increasingly saturated marketplace
• General recognition of the untapped value hidden in large data sources
• Consolidation and integration of database records, which enables a single view of customers, vendors, transactions, etc.
• Consolidation of databases and other data repositories into a single location in the form of a data warehouse
• The exponential increase in data processing and storage technologies
• Significant reduction in the cost of hardware and software for data storage and processing
• Movement toward the de-massification (conversion of information resources into nonphysical form) of business practices