by Angela Guess
A recent article takes a look at the growing role of Big Data in commerce. The article notes, “There are mountains of data created every day; in fact the tally for 2010 was around 1.2 zettabytes (or 1.2 trillion gigabytes) according to a study from IDC commissioned by EMC… The report also estimates that about 70% of that data is created by individuals and ranges from transaction data to all manner of socially generated content. Think about the things you do every day, shopping for groceries, bet you swiped your store card for a discount and used a debit or credit card to pay. Maybe you checked in on FourSquare when you got to the store, updated your facebook status, used a groupon coupon and even tweeted about the sale on fresh fish. Let’s just say that the digital footprint you generate every day is significant and very telling directly online and offline in a variety of situations.”
It continues, “That’s half the equation though, all of that data you generated is collected by some organization. Taken individually each data source provides some useful information but if you could aggregate it somehow, the overlap would tell a very complete story…what you like when, daily activities, interests, where you go, what catches your attention and all manner of behavioral clues. There are three basic flavors of this data, transaction, behavioral (social) and location or contextual. The data can be used, once aggregated and analyzed either individualized and generalized.”
The article goes on, “Individualizing the analysis of the available data can support both online and offline programs including online ad targeting, online and offline offer targeting, online dynamic pricing, individualized marketing programming, etc. Ultimately the inclusion of the behavioral and contextual data can lead to predicting future action, one of the ultimate goals for commerce. Predicting what might capture your interest, what and when you might buy, all of these are gold for merchants.”
photo credit: HikingArtist.com
