Why is normalization important in database management?

Normalization is a critical process in database management primarily aimed at reducing data redundancy. When a database is not normalized, it can lead to duplicate data being stored in multiple places, which not only wastes space but can also lead to inconsistency and errors. By organizing the data into separate tables and defining relationships between them, normalization ensures that each piece of data is stored only once. This streamlined structure not only makes the database more efficient but also simplifies data maintenance, queries, and updates.

While aspects like user experience, marketing effectiveness, and data security are important in the broader context of database usage, they do not directly relate to the primary objective of normalization. Enhancing user experience can be influenced by how data is presented and accessed, but not directly by normalization itself. Similarly, marketing effectiveness is more about utilizing data for analysis rather than the underlying structure of the database. Data security also concerns protecting the data from unauthorized access or corruption, which is a separate issue from how well the data is organized. Thus, the central purpose of normalization is to minimize redundancy, facilitating a more efficient and reliable database system.