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Predicting individual behavior is a basic objective of the social sciences, from economics to psychology, sociology and business.
Listening to customers’ interactions has never been easier than today thanks to Big Data solutions, which gain actionable insights into customer behaviour collecting information across web platforms, social networks, mobile devices, internal systems (CRM, e-commerce, call center, etc.).
Terms like Opinion Leader, “word-of-mouth” and viral effect added great value to traditional methods of gathering information(interviews, questionnaires, etc.) empowering organizations’ with the new opportunity of gleaning intelligence from a huge variety of human and machine data, paving the way to extraordinary accurate services and effective marketing plans, based on deep knowledge of customers’ preferences, habits and behaviour.
Online services and platforms like Facebook and Twitter, just to name two, provide a digital window into people sentiments enabling brands to listen to what they say about what they have done, or are actually doing.
Whether the digital world is influencing the sales or vice versa, monitoring a wide range of metrics is essential in every customer-centric approach where the big advantage lies in the ability to predict human behaviour in real-time and, therefore, the future.
Every brand faces the challenge of detecting new trends to satisfy customers’ expectations, while fostering innovation and expand its offering with competitive products.
- What are the common factors underlying successful products?
- How is it possible to detect key signals in a liquid society where people seek for originality and change?
- Which are the guidelines to follow in order to reach the sales target and make a profit?
Mastering Big Data can unveil changes in market perception, highlight recurring patterns in purchasing attitudes and discover similar products facing various degrees of success. Heterogeneous changes of behaviour, either in purchasing or in visits, between different brands are possible signals of a different perception of the given brand arising and unfolding in time.
The need to predict human behavior may sound like logically impossible but, thanks to the use of big data it turns into a scientific process.
It is the best method to avoid useless theoretical visions and not follow Robert Metcalfe footsteps.
“I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” - Robert Metcalfe, 1995
