The Love for Big Data!

Analyzing Big Data is one of the biggest technology trends right now. What is Big Data? According to Wiki, Big Data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. Using business analytics tools, big data can be used to determine customer trends and thereby provide targeted marketing strategies. Big data has revolutionized customer analysis approach.  

Pricing, Out of home advertising, finding customer behavioral patterns are a few examples of what big data could be used for. In the olden days, marketers sought to identify consumers and spend millions to catch him/her at the right time, in the right place, with the right message. Therefore the probability of being successful was comparable to wining a lottery. In the digital age, marketers identify a target markets and bombard them with banner ads, online videos and tweets. Slowly things changed, and now it is said that Businesses sit on Data Goldmines. Big Data has gotten a lot of attention over the past 18 months as retail, manufacturing and technology companies realize the gold mines they are sitting on and rush to scour them for competitive advantage. Amazon is the best example I could think of. Using customer information, amazon has built a gigantic database of customer interests and history of purchases. Though competitors could potentially mimic Amazon’s business model, it’s still seems impossible to compete with Amazon solely because of the rich customer big data Amazon has built over time. Target, for example, has figured out how to data-mine its way into a girl’s womb, to figure out whether you have a baby on the way long before you need to start buying Diapers. Surprising part was, ¹Target found out a teen girl was pregnant even before her parents knew about it.

If it is so useful, then why does big data create large amount of controversies? This is mainly because of the ethical implications behind it. Who really owns this information? What are the privacy issues and obligations? Face book and Google are one of the top 10 sources of big data. Google in fact knows every user in and out, through Gmail, Google + and Google search. Google then uses Google Analytics to predict customer behavior patterns. Then this information is sold to retailers such as Target, in order to help them improve customer reach. Is this not intruding into the privacy of a young girl? In my opinion it is.

Apart from the big companies misusing big data, security of this data is another big issue. ²Adobe was a victim of cyber-attack, resulting in 2.9 million customer information. Adobe sent out an email to customers saying that customers must reset their passwords. The thieves grabbed credit and debit card information. Should Adobe not be severely punished for this? Why should the customer suffer for Adobe not having high levels of security implemented? Though government has placed strict regulations in place, such as HIPAA for health care, organizations still seem to not follow these, just to save on the system security implementation costs. Another example of a data breech was ³Advocate Health Care- who lost social security numbers of more than 4 million people because of losing four unencrypted laptops. Not only did they not encrypt the data, but they were careless enough to lose them. Eventually the people impacted due to such incidents are the end users. This leads us to our topic, is it ethical to gain customer insights using big data. Of course not, if you do not know to protect such big data in the first place.

Privacy is the next biggest concern. Customers end up filling surveys, posting information in public sites such as face book, not knowing the implications. Companies such as Facebook, knows the data to day activities of through the pictures posted, location tracking and chats. It annoys me sometimes, how Google and Facebook misuse my searches. Yesterday, I goggled for some Nike products, and surprisingly my Facebook feed is filled with Nike deals and product offerings. As if this was not bad enough, Google even tracks the emails people send out. Once I mailed my friend about fit bit, and next minute I know, my Google page is full of fit bit advertisements. I feel this is intruding into my privacy. The minute you search for something on the internet, it is public information. The use of computer technology has increased dramatically over the past few years. It has become common for users to share personal information online everyday using PC’s and smartphones. This data, along with credit card purchases, medical records, and other material is stored in numerous powerful databases. As a result, the importance of privacy protection for consumers has grown substantially. How can firms balance between using the big data to gain customer insights and at the same time not intrude into his/her privacy?

                                  

One approach would be to balance between risk and innovation. Big data represents massive opportunities to benefit business, education, healthcare, government, manufacturing, and many other fields. The risks, however, to personal privacy, the ability to manage our individual reputations and online identities, and what it might mean to lose — or gain — ownership over our personal data are just now becoming topics of discussion, some parts of which naturally generate ethical questions. To take advantage of the benefits big data innovations offer, the practical risks of implementing them need to be understood. Customers must be informed about the risks of tying in information before companies use such information!

Source - 1 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ 2 - http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/adobe-data-breach/index.htm