Data or Information: Does it matter for making good marketing decisions?

I the early 1990's when one of my textbooks was in review, the editors changed all of the references to data and information to one -what they thought was a simplifying word - INFORMATION. Data is truly not information in the business decision world. Data is collected for the purpose of making a decision. It does not contribute to decision making until it is converted to DECISION INFORMATION using tools and technologies. For example, let's take a look at blogs. There is a mass of verbal data in blogs. When we systhesize this text data using symantic analysis and the blog tools/techonology available for the purpose of making a decision, the data is then converted to decision making information. What really makes up the difference between data and information is the decision maker - who challenges the data to reveal decision making information. So, if you are using Marketing Research to aid in decision making- ask to see the DATA, ask where the DATA has come from, and look very carefully at the simple clarifications of the data, like symantic richness/classifications, and meanings if it is text AND counts, percentages, and means/SDs if it has numbers involved.