Scott Hsia, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network’s Taiwan subsidiary AAA, has been quoted as stating, “the biggest risk in product retail is guessing.” This is essentially the problem that big data goes towards resolving. Hsia was the keynote speaker at a recent big data conference hosted by Digitimes in Taipei.
Hsia approaches big data from a retail and marketing perspective. He described a departure in marketing from “teaching” consumers what is the best, what is fashionable and when to consume, to the new reality of the internet age, where you need to market your goods to the right people, in the right context and at the right time.
Another way to phrase this, is that in the digital era, companies should be seeking to find existing need, instead of creating need. Essentially the product or service needs to be delivered to the client in a way that is seamless and does not force them to change their daily schedule or force them to wait around unnecessarily.
This presents another problem, in that the data that you collect has to be constantly updated in order to allow you to be aware of whether the consumer will be receptive to your marketing when they are exposed to it. If you have this data in hand, it is then possible to automate the marketing process, in delivering advertisements, in whatever form they take, when the consumer is most receptive to them.
Smart sensors and tagging can play a role in this, and in China, the mega IDs associated with individuals on WeChat even allow you knowledge of whether certain kinds of people are within your circle or not.
Joe Chiang, from e-Cloud Valley, a cloud services firm which works closely with Amazon Web Services, pointed to the three big challenges of big data, namely volume, velocity and variety. She stated that different solutions are suitable depending on the “temperature of your data” and the amount latency permissible until you’re provided with an “answer”. Some functions require data to be processed instantly, while, with other forms of data, the output is not required right away. With different requirements, different forms of storage at different pricing points will be required.【Unfinished; For Further Reading: IP Observer 012: Virtual Designs: Big Data and AI: Taiwan Consumers in the Here and Now】
