Business Analytics refers to various categories of analytical approaches for modelling different business situations and arriving at solutions and strategies for optimal decision-making in marketing, finance, operations, organizational behaviour and other managerial processes. Thus, Business Analytics today refers to different approaches for modelling and arriving at assessing and predicting risk, predicting market preferences, project feasibility, customer segmentation, inherent and underlying dimensions in consumer preferences, factors leading to probability of purchase, preferred segments in financial and credit card industry, probability of attrition in large organizations, etc.

The myriad of modelling and other analytical approaches which constitute Business Analytical applications in Indian Industry today include predominantly:

• Determining which attributes in a product are considered significant by the market and which are found to be significantly satisfactory--Gap Analysis.
• Analytical Modelling by Factor and Cluster Analysis.
• Analytical Modelling by Logistics Regression and Discriminant Analysis.
• Segmentation of primary target market by Heuristic Modelling such as RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis.
• Segmentation of target market based on large databases using Decision Tree approaches such as CHAID (Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection) and other Classification and Regression Trees.
• Determining Linkages between unobserved constructs such as customer satisfaction and factors leading to it, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).
• Determining relative preferences in consumer perceptions by Conjoint Analysis.

In this book, the author has discussed these analytical approaches following a classroom teaching format, drawing from her extensive teaching experience spanning over 30 years. The book first discusses all important concepts and then case studies are discussed which emulate real-life managerial situations.

This textbook is designed to serve the needs of management students for a course in Business Analytics.

PURBA HALADY RAO is a Fellow in Management from IIM Calcutta, 1976. Currently, she is a Visiting Faculty at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Management Ranchi, and Great Lakes Institute of Management Chennai. Her research experience encompasses environmental sustainability, green supply chain management, climate change and water management initiatives in corporate organizations. She has published a number of research papers in International refereed journals including International Journal of Operations and Productions Management, International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy and Environment, and Journal of Asia Business Studies. She has also authored books titled Greening the Supply Chain--A Guide for Asian Managers (Sage, 2008) and Predictive Modelling in Strategic Marketing (PHI Learning, 2008).