Week 5: Big Data and Marketing Research

Articles/Items Covered:

-"Advertisers Get a Trouve of Clues in Smartphone"

-"Big Data and You"

-"Demystifying Big Data"

-"The World's Most Valuable Brands, Who's Most Engaged?"

-“Numerati”

1 July

The article "Advertisers Get a Trouve of Clues in Smartphone" starts to put the pieces of the smartphone puzzle together.  Taking a line directly from the article, "advertisers will pay high rates for the ability to show, for example, ads for a nearby restaurant to someone leaving a Broadway show, especially when coupled with information about the gender, age, finances and interests of the consumer".  Now, this is a step in the direction of activity-based marketing where companies advertise not to specific demographic markets but continuously changing markets based on an individual’s current activities.  The next step in the process is to fully integrate an individual’s activities by creating an all-encompassing mobile platform that combines an individual’s interests (possibly integrating Facebook), current location, current time, and potential future schedule to create purely customized marketing micro strategies.  Based on the article's example, the mobile platform will recognize the exact location of the Broadway show and the current time.  Combining these two inputs with the individual’s interests and pre-programmed schedule for the night, the platform will market potential activities that are customized for that individual at that exact time.  Now, these marketing efforts can be simple advertisements or real-time deals/coupons/happy hours to entice the individual to utilize a companies/restaurants/bars services.  Overall, the objective of intergrating all these inputs into one central location is two-fold; provides the customer a real-time snap shot of potential activities with associated discounts and then provides the company with access to time segmented marketing options and real-time, activity-based marketing segments.      

2 July

Adding to my previous entry, the article “Numerati” divulges more details and insight into the possibilities of an all-encompassing mobile platform that allows companies to customize their marketing strategy to a single individual.  The sheer quantity and vastness of data that is available is overwhelming at the least, but ripe for marketers to chip away at potential gold mines.  One interesting point that the article alludes to is the idea of ‘behavioral marketing’ where mood-associated actions such as listening to a sad song trigger certain marketing strategies and advertisements.  This correlates very closely to my ‘activity-based marketing’ idea proposed in my previous post.  Both marketing ideas are advancements due in part to the vast, real-time data sources now available.  Overall, the long-term trend in marketing is big data and those who are able to sift through the endless numbers will be the successful ones.  

5 July
Marketing Canvas Assignment

Executive Summary

Barclays is a major global financial services provider engaged in multiple key activities such as personal banking, credit cards, corporate and investment banking and wealth and investment management with an extensive international presence in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. With over 300 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays operates in over 50 countries and employs 140,000 people.[1]  Barclays has engaged in numerous strategic alliances, strategic partnerships, and joint venture to successfully move, lend, invest and protect money for customers and clients worldwide.  They service a wide range of customer segments through owned direct channels, owned indirect channels, and partner indirect channels by establishing personal assistance, dedicated personal assistance, and automated customer relations.  Using key strategic resources, Barclays is able to provide vital value propositions to include newness, performance, customization, brand/status, risk reduction, accessibility, and convenience with its all-encompassing financial product offerings which make the company has a whole one of the leading world-wide financial institutions.  Turning to the financial status of the company, Barclay’s cost structure is comprised of operating expenses, property lease expenses, equipment lease expenses, administration and general expenses, and compensation expenses which equates to 20,989 billion British Pounds.  Furthermore, the revenue stream for Barclays include interest income, fee and commission income, net trading income, net investment income, insurance contract premium income, and operating income which equates to 25,291 billion British Pounds.  Overall, as a value driven firm, Barclays effectively combines key partners, activities, and resources to provide value intensive products to a large customer segment via differing channels.         

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[1] Group.Barclays.com. 2013. Accessed 5 July 2013.