The role of Big Data in the retail world

By Michael
July 26, 2012

Thinking about backup data warehouses and massive online storage facilities, it’s easy to get caught up in the idea that these enterprise-level solutions are all meant for housing corporate client information, expanses of spreadsheets and routine files from the mid 90’s that once were intrinsic to business functions. You wouldn’t necessarily think of Facebook or retail strategy, the vast caches of data used to keep online social media and advertising functioning and compiling usable information.

That’s precisely where the industry is taking Big Data backup tape management, however. The sheer volume of information now available and necessary in order to realistically compile these data sets has to expand in order to meet its mass, otherwise online marketing campaigns could be crippled.

Setting a structure

People use online tools more than television almost. They even use them simultaneously, checking in on Twitter with their smartphones during commercial breaks and streaming programs right to tablet PCs. The way this new age of consumers interact with media results in a whole new range of information that’s essential for retailers to determine the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns, or even to get into it in the first place.

Due to a lack of measurable ROI, some businesses are unwilling to enter the internet marketing world, according to EConsultancy. Understanding search engines, tracking customer clicks and getting a reading on how things are trending through social media are made more difficult by the millions of users every day feeding into these statistics. Creating a backup tape solution that can wrangle all this data is essential to creating usable metrics for businesses to digest and build on, or else there’s no way of knowing whether an advertising method is working or not.

How to catch it

By ingesting all this information, most businesses can improve on their retail marketing strategies online. First they have to invest in creating a solution that can actually handle all this data, or finding a third party where they can host it all for analysis later, as Business Insider pointed out. Corporations need to reach out to consumers and employees alike to get their feelings on internet ads, interests and behaviors in order to gain a better understanding of a broad amount of information best managed by backup tape management tools.

Leave A Comment