Bryan Li (10) | STAFF REPORTER
Have you ever searched something up, and seconds later got an advertisement for it? This is not a coincidence but a huge marketing ploy with many ordinary companies involved. These companies collect data to market certain products or services that they know you might be interested in. This is called big data. More recently, it has become ubiquitous due to the paramount rise in social media. Companies do this by looking at a wide range of personal items and collecting valuable information from your search history and your purchase history on your cards, to name a few.
Let’s say that you are searching something up, or using your rewards card at a store, that information will be used to market stuff to you. You may get an advertisement similar to what you searched up on a social media app, like Instagram. Perhaps, you get coupons in the mail for a purchase you bought with your rewards card. This is all designed so that consumers are able to optimize their shopping experience and cater their feed to align with their interests and hobbies.
The end goal is for companies to augment their revenue and generate customer loyalty. With big data, companies are able to learn which products sell the most and which products do not. This enables them to decide which products they should restock, with the hopes that the same level of consumer demand will continue.
Even though big data was designed to help consumers, many do not like this as they believe that it is an invasion of their privacy. Yet, the collection of big data is completely legal because there is actually no government that actually enforces the collection of big data. Big data is something that happens worldwide, and there simply is no enforcement agency that is able to regulate the collection of big data. Even if there was an agency to do this, the collection of big data would be legal. It is said in the terms and conditions of many user account registration processes, making it perfectly legal to do. But, when looking at this, you may also discover the positives of big data.
Even though the negatives are clearer that the positives, there are still many attributed to the latter. Businesses and companies are much more equipped to be able to track their sales. This makes it easier for them to be able to know what products are not selling as much as others. This makes the shopping experience better for consumers as it can allow them to spend more money they know customers are interested in. But, they can only do this if they tracked what people bought.
Big data may upset a few, but its key intent of enhancing the shopping experience makes it a net positive phenomenon in the 21st century.
