Got Customers? Use Big Data and Small Data to Understand Them Better
Your business is finally
up on its feet and there is a steady inflow of revenue. You are probably
considering expanding. Even if you are not, who would not like to understand
their customers better just to improve their market standing? Sure, you could
go about it the conventional way using research surveys. Or you could use big
data and small data to get a better understanding of your customers and their
psychology. You have probably heard these words, but what of they actually mean
and how can you go about using them?
Small data is the data
we get through conventional methods like research done on focus groupsboth qualitative and quantitative. All
participants are aware that we are collecting information about them.
Big data is what we
gather about the consumer without him knowing that we are getting data on him.
Big data can be gathered through transactions, clicks, financial data etc. Big data is characterized
through the 3 Vs- Volume,
Velocity, and Variety.
Let us see how each of the Vs will prove helpful for us.
Volume refers to the
vast amount, often terabytes and petabytes of data. Velocity refers to the
speed with which these are processed. Variety refers to structured data (date,
time, GPS location, database) as well as unstructured data (i.e. text, image,
voice, video). These 3 Vs coming together, that is fast processing of huge amounts of data
from various sources,
is what gives us deep information about our consumers exactly at the time when
we need it. We can get these in a cost-effective manner, and analyse them
deeply to come up with strategies that would suit the habits and patterns of
our clients.
Small data is equally
valuable. By asking questions to consumers, we can understand their motives behind the
transactions we captured through big data. These motives will help us get
deeper into their psyche and understand why they buy what they buy, why they
choose a certain product over another etc. The human insight we gain from this
understanding can play an instrumental role in the overall determination of how
we go about our business.
Thus, in order to get a
holistic view of the customer’s story, his purchase journey and his experience,
combining big and small data can be very helpful.
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