Four Insights About Big Data

      After I graduated from my undergraduate school, I received my first job--Data Analyzer. The work was to construct national industry data and to find the potential target market from data. 

      Many of my friends felt my job was so cool! But, I have to say the whole process was really challenging. I had to track and collect thousands of numbers everyday. My eye got very tired. Sometimes I had to go over and over again to update the right number. The analyzing process was not easy, too. I needed to learn how to use the right analytic tool and function to find the good result.

      I didn't know why I should collect those boring numbers. So, one day, I asked my boss directly, "what is the purpose?" He told me, "Your job is very important. Don't underestimate your value. You help us to build the big data, which has significant impact on our marketing decision." Suddenly, I felt highly motivated from inside of my heart. I could perceive the value behind the data. After five-month working, I finally collected about half million data and made detail analyze. To be honest, I felt very proud of what I did.

     That was my first time to heard the "Big Data" and lucky to build the big data. I learned big data plays a big role in company decision-making process.What big data can tell us? And, what big data Can not  tell us?  I would like to share four insights about Big Data based on my personal experiences:


# 1. Big Data can show a basic structure or direction on the decision-making path, but it won't tell you any detail insight behind customer behavior.

      Most data includes quantitative information such as purchasing amounts, transaction frequency, and convention.  It also includes qualitative information such as gender, age, date, address, and e-mail contact. Data analysis can quickly and clearly tell us which customer group would be most potential group to target. It helps us to have a general sense about our potential customers or market that we can probably to reach. 

      However, does the data tell us why people buy your products? How did they make the purchasing decision? Will they become loyal customers or just one-time buyers?

      It may depends on how companies generated the data and what are their strategic goals. However, I don't think data can tell you customer true purposes and insights. Conducting a interview with customers or creating short-answer survey are more effective approaches to collect valuable and detail insights about how customer think. Thus, data only tell us customer action, but it won't tell us why they act.

# 2. Big Data is a great measurement for business performance, but it won't measure everything.

      Big data can be computed many meaningful metrics such as convention rate, open rate, and ROI (return on investment). Company can use those metric results to measure its business performance. Thus, company can adjust its strategies based on metric outcomes in order to achieve better performance. 

      However, there are certain things such as culture, lifestyle, political change and customer insights, which big data is difficult or even impossible to measure. Company should combine other marketing research tools to collect those information in order to make a critical marketing decision.

#3. Big Data provides a logical sense in the business strategic plan, but it won't show the creative part in the plan.

      By analyzing big data, company can make a logical interpretation by comparing the results and analyzing the trends. Then, company can make logical reaction for next movement. However, data won't tell you what your creative ought to be, and you don't ask data to drive you toward the answer. Company can't use data to create advertising or find a certain celebrity to promote products. Thus, company should also think beyond the data and put creative thinking into marketing decision.

#4. Big Data shows the convention from customers, but it won't have interaction with customers.


      In the "When It Comes to Attribution, Customers Count", it states that companies focus on tracking data about conversions rather than thinking holistically about customers. Company should deeply understand its target customers and customer values first. If company starts to shift from conversion to customer value, it not only helps company to know customers better, but also helps company to build long-term relationship with customers. Like the article says, "a conversion comes only after a relationship has developed between consumer and brand."

Therefore,

      Data alone is not enough to make a marketing decision. Company needs to consider other factors relate to customer behaviors and insights. We can't 100 percent to trust every pieces of data that we collected because they may have mistakes. Or, the way we generate data may be wrong, so it won't show any meaningful results. Thus, company needs to track, update and correct the data effectively in before analyzing them. 

     Even though data can help to measure current performance, company can't make future decision only based on past behavior. Company should also adapt the current market and political environment, and analyze customer behavior change to prepare future decision.