MIS2502 Assignment-Big Data
Big data is a large, complex collection of data that is too difficult to process by traditional data processing tools and applications. There is benefit to predicting and analyzing a discern pattern to make right decisions. Retail businesses can use big data to study customer purchase behavior and find the association between different products.
Big data is related to the data mining, analytics and visualization covered in MIS2502. Companies and firms produce better results with large data amounts, but the disadvantage is the complexity in data processing. Due to the large data size, data mining is an important part of data processing. The techniques we covered are decision trees, clustering and association rule. Decision trees process the big data and determine the possibility of different results. If big data stores previous customer purchase behavior, decision trees can determine the customer’s purchase behavior by having their personal information and preferences. Cluster analysis can process histogram information to determine different segment profile plot for a company. Big data also leads to accurate results for association rule between products. Lastly, data visualization has become a trend because big data are very complex to understand and read. Some information might not be useful for certain business decisions, so data visualization makes the data easier to comprehend for making right decisions.
Many individual firms view big data as a competitive advantage in the industry. Retail companies such as Target use big data for business decisions and analysis, such as their store set-up and credit card. Big data collects the purchase behavior of each customer if they are using their store card, and this data helps to determine the association rule between each retail product. If people purchase eggs, they usually purchase milk too, and the store can decide either to put these two products closer together to make it convenient or separate these two products.
References
“Big Data.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 05 May 2014.
McGuire, Tim, James Manyika, and Michael Chui. “Why Big Data Is the New Competitive Advantage.” Ivey Business Journal. Ivey Business Journal, July-Aug. 2012. Web. 05 May 2014.
Spakes, Gary. “Four Ways Big Data Can Benefit Your Business.” Business Analytics and Business Intelligence Software. SAS, n.d. Web. 05 May 2014.