It is very common to have targeted ads appear on your phone or pc if you’ve recently searched for any item. Someone who has googled best shoes, or searched for a shoe store in maps will have ads for various types of shoes pop up randomly. This is the very visible impact of big data on E-commerce.
This is not something extremely new, it has been developed and implemented in various ways over the past decade, but it has never been as visible or as useful as it is today. With the global pandemic showing no signs of abating, big data is the only reliable way for marketers, retailers, and manufacturers to gain any useful information. Physical shopping is seeing one of the last nails on its coffin with Covid-19 and the E-commerce vendors and platforms are more than ready to hammer it home.
Big data refers to structured and unstructured data that is collected from a large variety of sources, it is fast-moving, extremely vast, and highly differentiated. Volume, Velocity, and Variety are the 3 V’s that accurately define the main features of Big Data. Sources can vary from abandoned shopping carts to transaction history to social media posts. Twitter alone generates more than 10 terabytes of data every day and this has only increased since the lockdown.
E-commerce Businesses have several existing platforms to leverage data science in order to understand the customers’ wants and needs. This allows them to be at the top of any emerging marketing trends. The analytics information also helps these platforms or even sellers in giving out the best customer support.
Amazon, the biggest name when it comes to E-commerce platforms is also the most valuable company in terms of market capitalization. The reason for this is clearly the scalability of their platform. They are extremely accessible to people all over the country and helps in attaining the best prices and quality. Amazon obviously uses Big Data to a huge advantage. You can see several ads appear on any of your socials on a regular basis.
The investment in big data analytics in the specific E-commerce industry was 3.5 billion USD in 2018 but it is only going to grow and exceed 10 billion USD by 2024. The writing is clear on the wall. Regular marketing is especially ineffectual during a pandemic, Big data is the only way to market.
