The pros and cons of using big data and IoT – Consumers & Marketers

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, it’s critical to analyse how businesses and networks are use our data, both positively and negatively outcomes. With the proliferation of connected devices and machines, data generation is growing exponentially, from smartphones and home appliances to automobiles, these digital products are constantly evolving, and the data generate can be leveraged to create value and add market value. It was forecasted that there will be 29 billion connected devices in the world, which around 18 billion will be related to IoT.

Although the Internet of things and big data enables large data collection and contributes to productivity in our daily routine and harnessed to deliver personalised and relevant marketing experiences to consumers, but it also raisesimportant concern on privacy and security

Benefits for Consumers

Big data and IoT in marketing have the potential to provide major benefits to customers. Marketers can obtain a better knowledge of consumer behaviour and preferences by data-driven marketing on collecting and analysing data from multiple sources to improve customer experience. 

Benefits for Marketers

Marketers are constantly on the lookout for new data to help them better understand customer behaviour and construct better models to boost their chances of success as well as attract and retain customers. By having big data that include product reviews, social media performance, sales data, customer feedbacks etc are able to help marketers measure performance, create successful advertisements or develop new products and services that better meet those need and to attract targeted customers. 

                                          How businesses use big data (Apogaeis 2017) 

Problems for Consumers

Big data and IoT offer marketing benefits, but privacy concerns must also be considered. With vast amount of data being collecting about consumers, many worry about the risk of being hacked or tracked , and may only share personal information with trusted providers like  health care and finance. In response these concerns, consumers have the option to restrict the types of data they share with businesses by utilising privacy tools such as web browsers with built-in cookie blockers, ad-blocking software etc. 

Mckinsey 2020 

Problems for Marketers

One of the hurdles is maintaining and interpreting vast volumes of customer data since customers frequently move and utilise different channels, thus marketers must properly assess the data they acquire. Another problem is the potential of data breach , which threatens security of consumer data and affect customer trust and likely to affect the overall market severely so it is essential to make sure marketers collaborate closely with IT and security department and make sure customers are secure and protected at all times.

Tell me about your thoughts on IoT devices and big data? Do you have any concerns about privacy and security when utlising IoT devices?