Scrolling through LinkedIn may induce panic attacks – Big Data is coming to murder your market research once and forever. Those who are afraid of it understand neither market research nor Big Data. Those who believe them don’t understand it, too and thus disregard it.

Yet those who use Big Data for marketing then go on to apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytical algorithms to analyze the data, get a considerable advantage over their competition.
So how do they do it?

All the data collection and analysis techniques become irrelevant if it overshadows the most important part of market research — the design of the metrics

Know the difference

The difference between the data collected through market research and Big Data is more clearer when looked at on a bigger scale. Market research uses surveys, cold calling, interviews, focus groups to collect data on certain subjects and topics from hundreds or even thousands of people, depending on the sample size. It helps to decide and understand some markets, but in the grand scheme of things – it’s as good as guessing.

Big Data is…well, big. Every login to Facebook, Netflix, bookings on booking.com, every tweet, Amazon and Walmart purchases generate vast amounts of data. The staggering amount of data is difficult to imagine and the kinds of information it presents can be scary. Data collected, stored, and analysed via newest database technologies opens the doors to the world of purchase history analytics, buyer behaviours, customer relations, tastes and the way they are formed, the context of deciding and how it changes.
These kinds of Big Data can be structured, unstructured and complex and may predict and analyse almost any kind of customer behaviour. When your company is doing it in a cloud with the newest databases – it can be done in real-time with unprecedented precision.

All the data collection and analysis techniques become irrelevant if it overshadows the most important part of market research — the design of the metrics. Understanding what data your market research requires is a prerequisite for successful modern marketing activity. The amount of data collected, analysed and applied for marketing with Big Data and old marketing surveys and cold calling is incomparable. But it can be overwhelming for companies who are afraid Big Data. That’s where teams like Tentacle Solutions come into picture.

It is all coming together

The conflict-based approach to Big Data and market research is destructive for the business. Making the best of Big Data for market research (and all the other purposes) needs skills and experience to make it all work. That is what a team of seasoned professionals from Tentacle Solutions bring to the table.