Although the underlying demographics is driving many of the trends, in 2014-15 we are seeing a hastening of the shift from a focus on customer demographics – age, sex, postcode – to a focus on exploring customer psychographics: What are their attitudes, beliefs and values.
What is making this possible? Big Data.
Big Data is one of the 10 trends discussed in our 2014-15 Trends Report.
Download the full 2014-15 trends report here: 10 trends that are changing our world (PDF)
In 2011 McKinsey & Co reported that as the amount of data in our world has been exploding, “Analyzing large data sets—so-called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus”4 and they are right.
So what is Big Data?
Big Data is the making sense of and the mining of the huge tranches of data we are generating – everything from the cookie placed on our computer to see what websites you are browsing to the uploading and tagging of photos on Facebook, status updates, to the enormous amount of data credit card companies have access to of shopping and transaction habits.
And it is everywhere.
As MIT researchers and authors Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson point out, “there’s much wisdom in the saying “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This quote, which has been variously attributed to both W. Edwards Deming and Peter Drucker, explains why the recent explosion of digital data is so important. Simply put, because of big data, managers can measure, and hence know, radically more about their businesses, and directly translate that knowledge into improved decision making and performance.”5
It is only with the advancement of computational power that these vast troves of data riches have been able to be mined effectively.
This is the year we will see this trend really take hold as the implications of failing to adequately make use of all a company’s information becomes clear.
No longer will the implications of big data be something that is grappled by a few data-oriented managers dotted throughout the organization. Leaders of organizations in all sectors will have to familiarize themselves with the implications – and opportunities – that lie within the vast amounts of stored information.
The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things – the connectivity of devices to the internet and communication between them – will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future.
All this data gives rise to a number of questions:
- How do you make sense of all the data you have?
- How much effort and resources do you apply to make sure you can use this data effectively?
- How do you take action on the insights you have gathered from the data?
Big Data is one of the 10 trends discussed in our 2014-15 Trends Report.
Download the full 2014-15 trends report here: 10 trends that are changing our world (PDF)
