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Big Data and Analytics to Increase Business Value: A Case Study of Amazon and Walmart

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This research explores the application of Big Data and analytics in e-commerce, focusing on Amazon and Walmart. It examines how these companies leverage vast amounts of data to gain valuable insights, improve customer service, and enhance business value. The study delves into the opportunities and challenges associated with Big Data in e-commerce, analyzing various techniques and technologies used for data analysis. It also highlights the specific value added to each company through the implementation of Big Data initiatives, showcasing how these initiatives empower decision-makers and drive business growth.

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REAL-TIME ANALYTICS [ITECH7407]
GROUP ASSIGNMENT

ON

Big Data and Analytics to Increase Business Value

Organizations
:
SUBMITTED TO
:- SUBMITTED BY:-
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Executive Summary:
The aim of this research is the collection of unstructured data from different sources such as

mobile and internet, process it to get valuable information and analysing the data to get the

useful insights of the e-commerce. A lot of literature review was done on the previous studies

to accomplish this aim. The major task in the research is to study the generation of data in 2

industries and evaluate the technologies and techniques of Big Data analytics that can give

advantages to the companies like improved customer feedback and reduced risk prevention.

For the completion of this task, Big Data analytics is used to create business value for

Amazon and Walmart.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary:
.................................................................................................................. 2
1. Introduction to Big Data
.........................................................................................................5
Big data in Amazon and Walmart
.......................................................................................... 6
2. Opportunities for the Big Data
............................................................................................... 7
2.1 Increased Shopper Analysis:
............................................................................................ 7
2.2 Improved Customer Service:
............................................................................................8
2.3 Easier and more secure online payments:
........................................................................8
2.4 Continued advances in mobile commerce:
...................................................................... 8
3. Challenges faced by the Big Data in e-commerce
...............................................................10
3.1
DATA:............................................................................................................................10
3.1.1 Data Availability:
.................................................................................................... 10
3.1.2 Data quality:
............................................................................................................ 10
3.1.3 Velocity:
.................................................................................................................. 10
3.1.4 Veracity:
.................................................................................................................. 10
3.1.5 Data Discovery:
.......................................................................................................10
3.1.6 Relevance:
............................................................................................................... 10
3.1.7 Personally Identifiable Information:
.......................................................................10
3.1.8 Data Dogmatism:
.................................................................................................... 11
3.2 PROCESS:
.....................................................................................................................11
3.3 MANAGEMENT:
..........................................................................................................11
4. Current techniques and technologies for Big Data Analytics
..............................................13
Big Data analytics technique and application for e-commerce
............................................14
Big data technologies for e-commerce
.................................................................................15
5. The value added to each chosen industry by the Big Data initiative from building new

capabilities and facilitate decision-makers
...............................................................................17
Walmart:
...............................................................................................................................17
Amazon:
............................................................................................................................... 18
3
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Conclusion................................................................................................................................19
References
................................................................................................................................ 21
List of Figures

Figure 1: Big Data using Top 10 Companies
.............................................................................5
Figure 2: Key Befits of analytics in big data
..............................................................................7
Figure 3: Opportunities for the Big Data
...................................................................................9
Figure 4: Challenges faced by the Big Data in e-commerce
....................................................12
Figure 5: Data growth in between 1986 and 2007
...................................................................13
Figure 6: Big Data analytics technique and application for e-commerce
................................15
Figure 7: Review of social media analytics process and Big Data pipeline
............................16
Figure 8: How Supply Chain Flagship Newsletter
..................................................................17
Figure 9: How Walmart Makes Money? Understanding Walmart Business Model
...............18
Figure 10: How Supply Chain Flagship Newsletter
................................................................19
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1. Introduction to Big Data
Big data is basically the huge and complex data sets where a large amount of data is present.

The data includes a lot of information including social media analytics, data management

capabilities and real-time data. The requirement of the big data is originally generated for the

big companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo etc.

Figure
1: Big Data using Top 10 Companies
Source: educationview, 2018

The new tools are added to the management of the Big Data to improve the handling and the

storage of the data. The new Big Data technology is both economically and technically

feasible. The new technology management can allow not only to store the huge data sets but

also to analyse the datasets to get a better insight into the information. The basic functions of

the Big include collection, storing, analysing and visualizing the huge volume of the data.

The collection of raw data is done from mobile devices or any other media collection device

and it is the common challenge faced by most of the organizations (
Russom, 2011). A good
platform for Big Data can allow developers to ingest a variety of data varying from structured

to un-structured at any available speed which is available at a real time. A secure, durable and

scalable platform constitutes a good platform for fulfilling all the requirements of the Big

Data. The unstructured data is converted into meaningful data once it reaches the analysing

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state. The process of joining the data, aggregating the data using some of the advanced
functions comes under the analysing state (
Jain, & Suryavanshi, 2017). The platform of the
Big Data provides data to the business stakeholders through agile visualization of the data

that makes the data easily accessible to the user. The type of analytics used can help the end-

user to get the best available statistical predictions and any recommendation action. This

makes the use of the Big Data optimal for the end users.

Big data in Amazon and Walmart

Huge e-commerce companies like, Amazon has improved its performance by utilizing the

Big Data available from its customer. As one of the dominant company in the market

Amazon has one of the biggest databases of the customer’s information. Though, Amazon

has started as a retailer brand but now Amazon started providing online entertainment store as

“Amazon Prime” which enabled users to get movies, television shows and series by just

taking membership through the Amazon channel. The tastes, preferences and the purchasing

history of the customers constitute a huge amount of information. Amazon improved its

customer care quality using the correct Big Data resources. Walmart is another big name in

the business of retail. It has 245 million customers who visit 10,900 stores of Walmart stores

across the globe. The data from the Walmart’s customer is handled by the Inkiru which helps

in the marketing, merchandising, and the fraud prevention of the Walmart across the globe

(
Gupta, et. al., 2014).
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2. Opportunities for the Big Data
In the world of emerging technology, everything that is done online or offline is a source of

data. Along with the increasing, the creation of the data, the tools to manage the data is also

developed. The data generation is reached to a point where the generated data is too much

data. The understanding of the data has become more complicated as the data leaves us with

various facts, perceptions, numbers, and percentages (
Zhou, et. al., 2014). The concept of Big
Data is quite complex and it is not yet understood by many of the organizations. Big Data has

a great influence on the retail market and it influences them in many ways. Some of the

opportunities that are provided by the Big Data to the retail organizations like Amazon and

Walmart are mentioned below:

49.0%

16.0%

10.0%

9.0%

9.0%
6.0%
Chart Title

1

2

3

4

5

6

Figure
2: Key Befits of analytics in big data
2.1 Increased Shopper Analysis:
It is very important for the business to understand the
behaviour of the shopper so that the business can grow. One of the essential parts of the

business success process is the management of the Big Data. It can provide data like the

ongoing trend in the market, any spike in the demands of the product and the preferences of

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the customer (Zhou, et. al., 2014). The business can make the most popular product available
to the customer and market them for increasing the sale of the product based on the data

provided by the analysis of the Big Data. There are some products that are not available on

the website but customer tries to search them, then the Big Data will help to understand those

searches and help Amazon or Walmart grab the new opportunities in the market.

2.2 Improved Customer Service:
The numbers which show the unhappy and unsatisfied
with the customer service are relatively high and alarming for both Amazon and Walmart.

91% of the unhappy customer opts out of continuing the shopping on e-commerce if they are

experienced with poor customer service experience. The more predictive side of the Big Data

can be used by Amazon and Walmart will help the companies to identify the problem in their

service and can positively solve the existing issues even before a customer can involve with

the company (
Zhou, et. al., 2014).
2.3 Easier and more secure online payments:
The role of the Big Data can be very
significant in the secure payment on the online websites of Amazon and Walmart. All the

different payment methods are integrated into one platform so that the payment option for the

users becomes easier and it also helps in reducing the risk of fraud. The fraud in the payment

gateways are identified at real time and the strong advanced analytics provides a proactive

solution for the identification and the prevention of frauds.

2.4 Continued advances in mobile commerce:
The use of the mobile phones is increasing
day by day with the increasing population. The use of mobile phone has reached a point

where researchers predicted that the use of the desktop computers is declining and at some

point, it will become obsolete.
Big data is an advanced tool that provides the mobility in the
field of e-commerce. The data can be collected from different sources by the companies and

the collected data can be analysed that will benefit the e-commerce companies (Bohrer,

2018).

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Figure 3: Opportunities for the Big Data
9

Increased Shopper Analysis
Improved Customer Service
Easier and more secure
online payments
Continued advances in
mobile commerce
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3. Challenges faced by the Big Data in e-commerce
Each day, about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated from the e-commerce. The data is

generally coming from videos, pictures, the posting on the social media, different sensors,

records of the purchase, GPS signals from mobile etc. There are challenges to the Big Data in

data collection, processing of the data and the management of data (
Zhou, et. al., 2014).
Some of the challenges faced by Amazon and Walmart are mentioned below:

3.1
DATA:
The challenges faced in the field of Data for e-commerce are:

3.1.1 Data Availability:
The availability of data is a major part for any company. The
companies like Amazon and Walmart hugely depends on the data for their decision making

or planning for the future. The companies can take a bad decision based on bad data.

3.1.2 Data quality:
The questions on the quality of data like the goodness of data, the
broadness of data covered, fineness of the sampling resolution and the timeliness readings all

together decide the quality of the data (
Kwon, et. al., 2014).
3.1.3 Velocity:
It is generally the speed at which the data is retracted by the application for
the user. The faster the availability of data the easier it becomes for any company to make

decisions based on that data.

3.1.4 Veracity:
The data can sometimes be missing some of the important parts. Sometimes
uncertainty, misstatements, untruths and imprecision can cause the bad decision making by

the companies. So it is very important for the Big Data service providers to give the accurate

and precise data to the user.

3.1.5 Data Discovery:
A lot of huge data sets are collected across the web which makes it
crucial to take out the meaningful and high-quality data from the unstructured data.

3.1.6 Relevance:
When a user search for some data on the web or from the huge data sets
presents on the Big Data servers, the user expects a relevant data for his search. The service

providers should keep in mind that the data retrieved should not be un-relevant to the topic in

order to give the user complete information (
Zhou, et. al., 2014).
3.1.7 Personally Identifiable Information:
Most of the information that is searched about
the people can compromise the privacy of them. So the data service providers must integrate

the security modules so as to extract enough information that will not harm the privacy of

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other people. Some part of this should have an oversight of the government to preserve the
privacy of the people.

3.1.8 Data Dogmatism:
Today most of the companies take help of the data analytics from
the Big Data but the companies should not be too dependent on this analytics for their big

decisions. Common sense and domain experts should take part in the decision making for the

big companies.

3.2 PROCESS:

There are various challenges that come up during the derivation of the useful and meaningful

insights from the data. Some of this includes the correct capturing of data from different

sources. The next step after data collection is the alignment of the data in a suitable form. For

example, resolving the issue of data duplicity when two datasets are the same. Then, the

transformation of this data into a form that can be used for analysis. The modelling is done

after that either mathematically or through some type of simulation. At last the visualization

and the sharing of the resultant output for the end user (
Kwon, et. al., 2014).
3.3 MANAGEMENT:

The data privacy, data security and the correct governance of the gathered data comes under

the management of the Big Data. E-commerce companies like Amazon and Walmart face

challenges in this also as the data should be used correctly. Using the data correctly means

that it is abiding by all the rules and its intended use. Companies should track the usage of

data, how it is derived and transformed along with managing the lifecycle of the data (
Kwon,
et. al., 2014)
.
Amazon and Walmart are required to manage the data properly as there are legal and ethical

concerns attached to the data. These organizations should also make the data secure, access

controlled and it should be logged for audits.

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Figure 4: Challenges faced by the Big Data in e-commerce
12

Challenges faced by the Big
Data in e-commerce
DATA
Data Availability
Data quality
Velocity
Veracity
Data Discovery
Relevance
Personally Identifiable
Information
Data Dogmatism
PROCESS
MANAGEMENET
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4. Current techniques and technologies for Big Data Analytics
There is an explosive growth in the generation of data from different sources. The Big Data is

not only a by-product but it is considered as an asset which can provide valuable insights for

the company. It can predict the customer behaviour and help the company to propose a future

approach towards the advertisement (
Chen, et. al., 2012). The companies like Amazon and
Walmart can make use of the data analytics to effectively meet the needs of the customers

need. Over the years the exchange of the data has been increased a lot in numbers which

makes it necessary for the companies like Amazon and Walmart to correctly evaluate the

unstructured data. In 2012, the database of the Walmart transaction is estimated to be 2.5

petabytes of data related to customer’s data. The growth of the data is mainly due to the

cheap availability of the internet services to the customers. In today’s world where everything

is done electronically, people use the internet to share information and use the internet to buy

or sell the items through the internet. The vendors of the e-commerce have taken advantage

of this and used the internet to increase their sales and services along with improving the

revenue and the awareness of the brand in the market and customers (
Akter & Wamba,
2016)
.
Figure
5: Data growth in between 1986 and 2007
Source: researchgate.net, 2014

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Due to the characteristics like volume, veracity and the volume of the Big Data, the
traditional databases are not likely to handle the operations of the big data analytics. The new

advanced technologies like Hadoop have made it a lot easier to analyse the Big Data and

extract useful insights. Along with Hadoop, Data Mining also plays an important role in the

management of the Big Data for the big companies using the machine learning and clustering

algorithms (
Chen, et. al., 2012).
Big Data analytics technique and application for e-commerce

Some of the techniques that are used in the e-commerce are mentioned below:

Social Media Analytics: it includes the collection of data from the social networking
sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. and that data can be analysed to get the important

insights about the users (
Chen, et. al., 2012). Statistics show that about 40% of people are
likely to buy an item if they shared in on social media. The referrals attract about 71% of

social media users. While purchasing something, 74% of the users depend on the social

media to make a decision.

Predictive Analytics: The usage of the old transaction or the purchasing history of the
user so that the future trends can be predicted is commonly termed as predictive analysis.

The statistical models and the machine learning algorithm help in the analysis of the

customer data. Using the Big Data, the e-commerce vendors can easily predict the

customer behaviour at an efficient cost and very faster (
Akter & Wamba, 2016). The use
of the predictive analysis can be done to improve product recommendation, price

management, and predictive search for the vendors,

Mobile Analytics: The number of mobile phone users is increasing day by day. From
using the mobiles as communication tools to using mobiles for practically everything, the

importance of mobile is increased. The analysis of the data provided by the mobile user

can allow the e-commerce vendors to provide services like advertising based on location,

offers based on location. Also, the use of this process is very cheap and effective (
Akter
& Wamba, 2016)
.
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Figure 6: Big Data analytics technique and application for e-commerce
Big data technologies for e-commerce

Text Mining: This technology is based on the text available on the social sites or blogs
for framing a judgement or on the relevance of the data. A list of keywords is generated

by the e-commerce vendors related to the product they wish to monitor. The sentiments or

popularity of the product can be identified using this (
Edosio, 2014).
Machine learning: this technology works in integration with the artificial intelligence.
Each letter of the obtained information is tagged together and then it is analysed. After

analysing, the word is then referenced with a predefined word combination that can

evaluate whether the comment is positive or negative.

15

Big Data analytics
technique and
application for e-
commerce
1. Social
Media
Analytics
2. Predictive
Analytics
3. Mobile
Analytics
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Figure 7: Review of social media analytics process and Big Data pipeline
Source: link.springer, 2018

Collaborative Filtering: A database with the user preferences in the history of the search
is preparing (
Edosio, 2014). Whenever a new user searches in the e-commerce site the
algorithm matches it with the closest preference class that matches the customer’s taste.

Clustering algorithm: The users who have a similar preference are clustered in a single
group. Any new customer is added to a cluster by matching any similarities between them

(
Jain, & Suryavanshi, 2017).
Bluetooth location-based advertiser: This technology makes use of the Bluetooth to
provide the targeted customer with some special offers at a particular time of the day.

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5. The value added to each chosen industry by the Big Data initiative from building new
capabilities and facilitate decision-makers

There are a lot of techniques and technologies which can help the companies like Amazon

and Walmart grow their business upon (
GalbRaith, 2014). Some of the advantages that are
taken by these companies using the Big Data are mentioned below:

Figure
8: How Supply Chain Flagship Newsletter
Source: scdigest, 2014

Walmart:

Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation. The acquisition of the Kosmix in

2011 made them take help of the software developed by Kosmix that can search and analyse

the media applications so that they can provide optimized insights to the users. The Walmart

Shopycat is used to capture real-time data from social media sites using millions of entities

and relations. In 2013, Walmart acquired another company Inkiru which uses a software

based on predictive analytics (
Mujtaba & Maxwell, 2007). It captures data from across the
internet and helps Walmart to create personalized or customized campaigns for their

advertising. In January 2013, the company reportedly stated that their media analytics

software can index and search 60 billion of the social media documents which will help the

company to understand the sentiments, popularity and the trends in those records on a real-

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time basis. Their software is also capable of watching over the sentiments of all Walmart
stores across the world based on their geographic locations (
Mujtaba & Maxwell, 2007).
Their software called as Social Genome (Now Walmart Shopycat) is also capable of

capturing information and relationships about people, events, products, organizations, topics

and location.

Figure
9: How Walmart Makes Money? Understanding Walmart Business Model
Source: revenuesandprofits, 2015

Amazon:

Amazon is considered one of the world’s largest online retail store and entertainment site.

The clustering algorithm and collaborative filtering are used by Amazon to cluster the users

with the same taste in one preference. The products are arranged to suit each customer

preference on a real-time which is a challenge in itself keeping in mind the collection of

millions of user's data. Group of a user are based on similar search and item to item

collaborative filtering so that the best products for a user are recommended. Products are also

recommended based on the search history of the user. This uses the user history preferences

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and rated item so that the items similar to user’s taste are listed. The other features of
Amazon product recommendations include recommending the products based on the items

already available in the cart of the user. The algorithm can build a table with similar items

that the user can tend to buy (
Lang, et. al., 2012).
Amazon uses the dynamic pricing for some of its users. Dynamic pricing means the resource

planning systems are used to dynamically set prices or customized discounts to selected

customers based on the historical data such as the previous history of purchase, cookies, or

clickstream. In September 2000, CNN reported that one of the buyers is effected by $2.50 in

purchasing of a DVD after deleting the cookies. In another report, CNN reported that the

dynamic pricing algorithm is used by Amazon to sell a product for $51 then its original price

on Amazon (
Lang, et. al., 2012).
Figure
10: How Supply Chain Flagship Newsletter
Source: scdigest, 2014

Conclusion

The introduction of the Big Data has only provided an advantage to the e-commerce retailers.

The new and advanced tools and techniques to manage the Big Data make it easier for the

online stores to be successful and useful. The Big Data provides all tools for the online retail

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to be successful. Though the analytics of Big Data faces some challenges like staffing,
training and privacy concerns, many of the big online companies like Amazon and Walmart

are adopting it and gained a lot of success in the field of business growth and providing better

services to the customers. On average 5 of the top business organization in the USA use the

Big Data analytics and has achieved a tremendous success in business (
Kwon, et. al., 2014).
Every store online or offline wants to earn money and grow their business along with

satisfying the needs of the customers. For that purpose, the companies are required to have as

much information about the customer as possible. The discounts are another great way to

attract customer as customers tend to go where they get their desired item at a favourable cost

(
Zhou, et. al., 2014). The companies like Amazon and Walmart have successfully made use
of the different types of Big Data analytics to gain profit and grow their business.

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and agenda for future research.
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