The Marketing Challenges in the Big Data Age

Abstract

This paper highlights four marketing challenges that companies face in the digital age, considering the strategic, technological and tactical approach; its aim is helping organizations, especially marketing departments, to make better decisions implementing analytical data. The first part of the article presents the definition and evolution of marketing from the industrial revolution, with its focus on the product and mass production, to the current consumer-focused marketing and customer needs, which look for differentiation and customization of both products and services based on technological advances and the various accesses to information. The second part specifies what Big Data, data volumes, data types and sources are; and it also points out what analytical data (data analytics) is. The third part outlines the description of marketing today, and how the services of Web 2.0 (social networks, RSS, fast messaging technologies, videos, instant messaging, wikis, blogs, etc.) and their theoretical underpinnings help client acquisition and loyalty, and branding. Finally, the article expounds the four challenges for companies in the current digital age: 6V challenge (volume, velocity, variety, veracity, value and visualization); the strategic, technological and operational challenges in organizations; marketing trends; and measuring ROMI (return on marketing investment).