Chapter 3 of Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification by Rajat Paharia focuses on how big data is the next big thing within customer satisfaction and rewards. According to Paharia, “Big data enables businesses to know their customers, employees, and partners in unprecedented ways” (Paharia, 2013, p. 39).
To put it into simple terms, big data is large and complex pieces of data that are collected by companies to better understand their base and audience. It comes from a wide variety of sources and is incredibly complex information that typical systems cannot store (Paharia, 2013, p. 40). Data, of course, is not a new concept. The collection and usage of people’s information goes back centuries. Big data is a newer concept, with the large advancement of technology in the last 50 years.
In the past, companies did have the average data such as your name, phone number and address, but big data gains so much more than that. In a way, it is concerning how much information each search we make online gives away. Take Amazon for example. Amazon has data collection resources that sees what moves you make online. Some of these include (but are not limited to) the amount of time you look at an item, what items have been added and removed from your cart and so much more. Have you ever wondered why an item you looked at – or even were speaking about earlier – has randomly popped up on a website browser? The answer is big data!
“Huge new streams of unstructured data have become available to tap into because nearly everything we’re doing is mediated by technology and therefore able to generate data” (Paharia, 2013, p. 40). I can see both viewpoints of big data and it’s effects. One viewpoint is that big data is too invasive and has too much control over our information that we did not even know we were giving out. The other side of the spectrum says that big data is useful and helps our online experience by making our lives more convenient. I tend to lean more into any side that claims that technology is too involved in our world today, so I agree more with the first viewpoint. I love technology, and in many ways (such as medically) we have made many incredible, lifesaving advancements. On the other side, I believe systems like AI and social media have caused too much dependency on technology.
As big of a caveat as that was to the point of the chapter, to me, it ties into the fact that technology has advanced in crazy ways, allowing for companies and employee relations to see what their audiences are doing, watching, clicking, etc. The chapter goes over some ways that big data is collected, including crowdsourcing and A/B testing, which both allows a company to collect true and direct data from customers. I believe that big data is useful, if it remains ethical. Proverbs 12:22 states “the Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.” It will be quite interesting to see where big data leads in the next couple of years or decades!
Paharia, Rajat. Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification (p. 40). McGraw Hill LLC. Kindle Edition.
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