... a collection of datasets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using current database management tools.

The benefits - which can only be realised by massive investments in new technology - include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis and visualization.

According to Peter Tufano, the dean of Oxford’s Said Business School, which played host to the event, while awareness of the topic was high among enterprises, only about 6% of companies have got beyond a pilot stage, and 18% are still in one.

“That means three-quarters of industries are looking at this and saying ‘what is this all about?’”

Why aren’t they looking at Big Data? “The answer across all business,” he said, “was ‘we don’t know what the business case is.’”

But according to speakers at the event, the business case has already been answered.

Michael Chui has extensively researched the area for McKinsey Global Institute. His conclusion is emphatic: “The use of data and analytics in general is going to be a basis of competition going forward for individual firms, for sectors and even for countries. Those companies that are able to use data effectively are more likely to win in the marketplace.” [MT's italics]

MGI’s research showed that in just one field—personal location data—some $100 billion of value can be created globally for service providers through use of data.

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... 73% per cent of interviewees were aware that companies track the websites they visit and that this data is used to approximate consumer preferences for marketing purposes.  

Moreover, Canadians are pretty relaxed about such irritants as being recorded on closed-circuit television cameras or undergoing body-scans at airport security.

States the report, titled The Truth About Privacy:

• The most plugged-in consumers realize that this [behavioural tracking] is part of the infrastructure of the internet.
   
• A majority of respondents (53%) also said they are willing to share location data, such as check-ins and most frequented locations, in order to obtain a benefit.
   
• An even great number (79%) are willing to share their shopping data, including where they shop and the types of things they tend to buy.

According to the survey, these findings are consistent with a 'savvy shopper' profile.

Says David Tucker, the report's co-author: “When it comes to something like online behavioural advertising, people tend to show a degree of awareness that this is happening, and they understand that it doesn’t affect their finances or their reputation".

Read the original unabridged Calgary Herald article.

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... switch focus to other aspects of the FMCG titan's business, e.g. health and wellness and household products.

According to UK trade magazine Marketing Week: "Families will test practical ways to adapt their daily routines and adopt more sustainable behaviour, for example, not throwing away food and not over buying. Families’ behaviour will be recorded using video and paper diaries.

"Meal planning and recipe tips" will be provided via Unilever brands, among them Knorr and Hellmann’s.

Continues the Marketing Week article: "It is hoped the initiative will help [Unilever] understand the triggers and barriers to changing consumer behaviour towards more sustainable choices.

"The challenge combines a money-saving message with a sustainability message after a Unilever poll found almost 70% of consumers claim that the main barrier to adopting more sustainable behaviours is because it is too expensive.

"Unilever wants to 'bust the myth' that sustainable living is more expensive and make consumers aware that it can also save money.

The Anglo-Dutch giant is the world's seventh largest consumer goods manufacturer* (according to Global Powers of Consumer Products, a report by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu).

*Preceded (in order of ranking) by Samsung Electronics, Nestlé, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Sony and Apple.

Read the original unabridged Marketing Week article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... market convergence across a host of other markets, including ticketing, retail, loyalty, and access control.

 According to the ABI report, these are the key indicators:

• Market convergence is not quite ready for mass commercial roll out, but the potential value-add that NFC brings has been identified.
   
• Smart card and IC vendors, device OEMs, MNOs, partnering service providers, and payments networks are all set to benefit should convergence prove successful.
   
• According to ABI research analyst Phil Sealy: “Market convergence is at least two years away from reality. We believe transportation and ticketing will be the first market to benefit from convergence, with 26% of all NFC handsets forecast to house a contactless ticketing application in 2017.

• Transport authorities will have the ability to offer additional added value services, including route planners, delay bulletins, timetables, as well as retail and loyalty, or advertising applications offering own brand or partnering/local business a platform to offer additional solutions to generate new revenue streams.

Near field communication is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimetres.

A report from a different source published last week indicated broadly similar growth in this burgeoning market.

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... live in households with a per capita monthly income of between R$291 [US$145] and R$1019 [US$500] and have a low probability of becoming poor in the near future.

Over the past decade, 35 million people joined the official middle class in Brazil, which in 2002 represented 38% of the national population. Today, 104 million Brazilians, or 53% percent of the population, are thus categorised.

According to the SAE study, the expansion of this group resulted from countrywide economic growth and reduced inequality. If these trends are maintained, an estimated 57 percent of the population will be in the middle class by 2022.

Brazil has in the past suffered from high levels of income inequality – its executives boast the highest pay in the world – but successive governments have, over the past decade, sought to remedy this.

They did so via the Bolsa Família program, which provides direct financial support to Brazil’s poorest families in return for ensuring that their children are vaccinated and attend school.

Another key factor driving the prosperity graph upward was the boosting of Brazil's minimum wage, increased by around 60% over the 2002 - 2010 period. It  currently stands at R$622 per month.

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... incomes are forecast to fall by an average 0.2% in 2012.

Many UK households have have been affected by wage freezes during the economic downturn, with inflation rising sharply between September 2009 and September 2011 to reach 5.2%, according to the Consumer Prices Index [CPI].

Apart from a small rise in the rate of inflation last month, the CPI has fallen steadily since then to 2.6%.

However, unemployment also rose sharply during the downturn, from 1.61 million in May 2008 to 2.59 million in July 2012.

The study predicts that real levels of income will start to pick up as inflation falls further, with middle and low-income families benefiting the most. Among the CEBR's other predictions:

• Middle-income households would see incomes rise by 1% next year, with lower-income families seeing a rise of 1.5%.
   
• The richest households would see incomes rise by 0.7%, the research estimated. This is because of a drop in top executives' pay and bonuses and the scaling back of some tax allowances.
   
• Similar increases would be seen across the board in 2014 and 2015, it suggested.
   
• Retail boost: The CEBR said improvements in real income levels would have a knock effect for struggling retailers. Over the next  twelve months, it predicted retail sales volumes will rise by 2.5%.
   
• Says CEBR economist Daniel Solomon: "After four barren years, there is finally a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for retailers. Conditions will still be tough, just slightly easier than before."

Many retailers have struggled during the UK economic downturn. The economy is officially back in recession after contracting for the past three quarters.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

...  interviews with over 152,000 individuals in thirty-one key internet markets over seven separate waves of research. The latest fieldwork took place in Q2 2012.

Featuring in the report's key benchmark statistics:

Facebook: Facebook users are the most active of all the global social platform users with 64% of account owners contributing in the last month via PC, tablet or mobile. Six hundred and fifty-three million people had used the platform in the last month, a 40% increase year-on-year of which 43% (273m) were active via mobile.

Google Plus: Thanks to integration the rest of the Google product range, G+ has 336m active users, a 58% increase in the past six months. China, India and Indonesia dominate usage and globally 120m active users have shared photos through the service while 108m have hit a plus 1.

Twitter: Although a staggering 517m users have created an account, only 262m have used the platform in the past month.

Five key trends in social media:

1. Social media is the internet: Social media is so ingrained into the modern internet experience that a staggering 90% of all internet users now have an account on at least one social service and 70% of them contributed in the past month.
    
2. Emerging internet markets dominate growth numbers for the big name social services and the top five markets for owning and being active on social profiles are Indonesia, China, South Korea, Philippines and Russia.
    
3. Passive users are transforming social: When social media arrived, it was very much about consumers publishing to the world and peer-to-peer communication. The situation today is shifting rapidly. Increasingly, social media and the social platforms are enabling consumers to follow and stay up to date with people in the public eye. Consequently contribution levels are falling with messaging friends falling 16% from 69% of social network users in Q2 2012.
    
4. Social Platform Adoption Trends 2012 finds that on Twitter, although 517m have created an account, only 262m have actively used the platform in the past month and just 48% of these had posted a tweet. On Facebook, 192m of the 845m people who visited Facebook in the past month did not make a single contribution. As users become more passive over time and increasingly turn to people in the public eye or well-known organisations for interesting content, social will increasingly become a broadcast channel.
    
5. Emerging markets will power Facebook onwards and upwards: Facebook continues to demonstrate epic growth, topping 1bn accounts by the end of Q2 2012. Growth is now entirely driven by new users in markets such as Brazil and India, where social media is mass market and internet penetration is growing rapidly. There has been a recent decline in the US and other mature markets such as Sweden, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The relentless growth of emerging internet markets like Brazil, Indonesia and India, will according to our three years of trend data, enable Facebook to hit 1.5bn users by the Q3 2013 and 2bn users by the end of 2014.

Pinterest becomes an international hit: The new star of social has certainly made a massive impact, already signing up 53m active users. This is rapid growth for a product that only came out of beta in August 2012.

This a demonstration of the globalisation of the internet as only 16m of these active users originate in the US, with China (11m), India (8m) and Brazil (1.8m) leading the international growth charge.

Photo sharing dominates social usage: Sharing photos is by far the most important activity on all the devices used by Facebook users. Eight-two per cent of active Facebook desktop PC users have shared via PC, 60% of mobile users via a mobile and 57% of tablet users via a tablet. It outranks messaging friends, posting status updates or sharing links.

This is replicated (at a lower level) in Google+ – where 120m active users have shared photos and is also the second-most important activity in Twitter – 41% – after posting comments on your daily activities, which scored 48%.

Comments Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex: “Mass-market social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have truly enabled all internet users to become social.

"They are globalising the internet by providing localised services that users across the world are adopting as their default internet experience. Fast-growing internet markets will continue to drive user base growth and will define how social services are shaped into the future.

"Despite this globalisation in platforms, local trends remain distinct, with every country showing different patterns of usage. It’s never been more important for brands and marketers to understand their users.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... one of its top-selling products, Supima Cotton Fitted Sheets, was being slammed in online customer reviews. 

As a result it removed the sheets from its website, having found that a wrinkle-resistance treatment mistakenly added by a contractor was causing the cotton fabric to unravel. It offered new sheets to the 6,300 customers who had purchased the sheets and destroyed the rest of the faulty batch.

"Before [the data mining project] it would have taken us months and months to figure out if something was wrong with the product through returns, if we ever would have known at all," admitted L L Bean's chief marketing officer Steve Fuller.

LL Bean is not alone in recognising the marketing value of mining online consumer buzz. Among other retail giants tuning into the chat are Wal-Mart Stores and Amazon.com.

These firms - and others - mine billions of social-media conversations and customer product reviews, using the information as a quality-control system, asserting that the data offers insights into supply-chain snafus, flawed products and poorly-written instruction manuals.

Says Greg Hall, Walmart.com's vp of marketing: "We're using that real-time feedback to help suppliers improve products faster."

Read the original unabridged article here.

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... a healthy number of competitors slugging it out for second place behind the iPad. 

According to Yankee Group's new report, 2012 US Tablet Landscape: An All-Too-Familiar Story, iPads currentlyrepresent 51% of all tablets owned in the US, leaving all other makers battling for less than half the overall market.

But some 25% of survey respondents who intend to buy a tablet in the next six months say they don't know which brand they will purchase - presenting a huge opportunity for manufacturers looking to grow their base.

"For the second quarter in a row, Apple's iPad is leading the tablet market, forcing all other competitors to battle for the remaining 49% share," comments Yankee's research VP and head of devices practice, Carl Howe. "It's too late to change current ownership, but tablet makers looking to gain on Apple need to start improving their brand visibility and targeting people who don't already have their minds set on an iPad."

Among the other findings from the report ...

• Amazon's Kindle Fire has cooled with consumers: Those who planned to buy a Kindle Fire in 2011 now own one, bumping ownership up to 7%. But consumers' 'intent to buy' has dropped off, falling from 11% last year to just 6% today.
   
• Samsung takes a hit: Last year, more than 10% of consumers owned a Samsung tablet, while 8% intended to buy one in the next six months. In 2012, these figures have fallen to 7% and 4% respectively.
   
• Smaller tablet manufacturers face an even grimmer outlook: Fewer than 4% of consumers currently own a BlackBerry PlayBook or a Motorola or Dell-branded tablet; while just 2% say they own an Asus tablet.
   

As to the latest - and most formidable - rival in this mushrooming market, however, Yankee Group is curiously silent, with nary a word about Google's Nexus 7, just-launched to rave reviews.

For more on this story from MediaPost.com click here.

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... this diverse and highly educated generation is open to new experiences, and its members are more likely to try a new drink - both in and out of the home - than those of any other age group.

 Interesting and actionable findings include:

• Millennials are frequent consumers of adult beverages – eight in 10 consumed an alcohol beverage in a bar, restaurant or other on-premise venue in the past week and nine in 10 had consumed at home.

• Millennials consume domestic light beer, hard ciders, cocktails, red blend wines and Moscato wines more often than older consumers.
   
• Price and variety are considered much more or somewhat more important for away-from-home adult beverage purchases than for at-home purchases by half of Millennials surveyed.

But Millennials are far from a homogenous group. For example, younger Millennials are more price-conscious than older ones.

For this reason, advises David Henkes, Technomic's VP and leader of the firm's adult beverage practice, marketers of alcoholic beverage and restaurant operators need to take strategic approaches based on Millennial segments’ attitudes and behaviors regarding alcoholic-beverage occasions and consumption.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.