Opportunities and challenges of big data in business and marketing

This essay discusses the opportunities and challenges of big data in business and marketing. It explains the concept of big data, its importance, and how it can improve business efficiency, pricing, and competitiveness. It also highlights the challenges of big data, such as data management, security, and data integration. The essay concludes that big data can help businesses make better decisions, but it requires careful management to avoid potential challenges.

Running head: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
Applying mixed method research to Business: Opportunities and challenges of big data in
business and marketing
Name of the student:
Name of the university:

1OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
Introduction
In this current technology based business era, big data is referred to as an ever increasing
data inundation in terms of variety, volume, complexity and velocity that has been generated in
the digitized eco system1. In other words big data is a dataset whose size is further than the
aptitude of a normal database software tool. The application of big data is widely generated in
the region of the consumers that is based on online purchase, social media activities, web clicks
and geographical location tracking etc.
This essay depicts the impact of big data in both business and marketing. Big data help
to take accurate decision making approach for any business organization regardless of its
background. The growing requirement of collaboration has led a business towards the developed
digital ecosystem2. Apart from this, at each steps the consumers can eventually create new data
as well. With the help of the big data technology the customers can adopt advanced level of
analytics like research on operation for providing personalized recommendations for the online
consumers.
Opportunities and challenges of big data in business and marketing
Big data is referred to as one of the most widely used technologies in both the medium
and large business organizations. There are different big data tools available in the marketing and
1 Riggins, Frederick J., and Samuel Fosso Wamba. "Research directions on the adoption, usage, and impact
of the internet of things through the use of big data analytics." In System Sciences (HICSS), 2015 48th
Hawaii International Conference on, pp. 1531-1540. IEEE, 2015.
2 Bello-Orgaz, Gema, Jason J. Jung, and David Camacho. "Social big data: Recent achievements and new
challenges." Information Fusion 28 (2016): 45-59.

2OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
based on the type or background of the business, the owners should adopt the most suitable big
data tool to lead it towards measurable success.
About the concept of big data
Big data is a combination of three different factors such as high volume, high variety and
velocity. Big data application has the ability to observe all the activities taking place in a
business organization including business transaction, social media activities and also information
of the sensor data3. Moreover, it can create large set of data for the company success. Big data
stream can stream in a higher speed and can deal with timely. The data processing can analyze
the stream of data for producing near and real time results also very in a speedily manner. Bid
data is all about large data but does not concern about the type of the data. The data may be
structured, numeric, or unstructured in terms of video, email, audio etc.
Importance of big data
Big data cannot deal with the amount of data that a company stores in their server but
deals with the way through which the data can be utilized appropriately. Each company has their
own way to utilize data4. The utilization of big data and potential growth of a company are
complimentary and directly proportional to each other. It means that as efficiently businesses
utilize its data that much chances of business growth also enhances accordingly. A business
organization can gather data from any resource and ca analyze them to find out the most suitable
3 Baesens, Bart, Ravi Bapna, James R. Marsden, Jan Vanthienen, and J. Leon Zhao.
"TRANSFORMATIONAL ISSUES OF BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS IN NETWORKED
BUSINESS." MIS quarterly 40, no. 4 (2016).
4 Donnelly, Christina, Geoff Simmons, Gillian Armstrong, and Andrew Fearne. "Digital loyalty card ‘big
data’and small business marketing: Formal versus informal or complementary?." International Small
Business Journal 33, no. 4 (2015): 422-442.

3OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
one5. Business can be negatively as well as positively impacted with big data tools, the
opportunities and challenges of big data tools are elaborated in the below section:
Opportunities of big data
After adopting big data analytics different challenges and opportunities can be faced
Big data gives transparent advantages to business organizations who have adopted it as
an analytical tool, but each time it is not necessary that more amounts of data will add more
values to the company profit. Big data gives many opportunities as well as challenges to the
organizations who have adopted this analytical tool.
BI is suitable for aggregation and analysis of structured data but there are some kinds of
analysis BI cannot handle accurately. This is dependent on the situation where, data become
more diverse, granular and real time and iterative6. After adopting big data analytics the cost,
decision making, productivity and service giving capability of a company can evolved. On the
other hand, challenges may occur during deciphering critical information.
On the other hand, companies may face challenges also after adopting big data in terms
of storage to this data that has become a challenge for the enterprises. Security and data privacy
and good quality analysis are the other challenges. Data gathered from different sources again
cannot be organized accurately, that may define as a challenge to those companies who have
adopted Big data as an analytical tool.
5 Sun, Zhaohao, Huasheng Zou, and Kenneth Strang. "Big data analytics as a service for business intelligence."
In Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, pp. 200-211. Springer, Cham, 2015.
6 Zhou, Zhi-Hua, Nitesh V. Chawla, Yaochu Jin, and Graham J. Williams. "Big data opportunities and challenges:
Discussions from data analytics perspectives [discussion forum]." IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine 9, no.
4 (2014): 62-74.

4OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
After the adoption of big data the followings are the opportunities those can be obtained:
Big data cuts of the project and business cost: The total business as well as project cost
can be minimized with the help of the application of big data tools. From the recent technology
aspects it has been found that, company retailers can cut off their business cost up to 15% with
the implementation and application of big data7. Companies can compare the maintenance charge
allotted for the contractors against all the other vendors. Big data helps to make effective
decision making approaches as well and due to this application the issues associated to invoice
processing and automated service schedule can be easily eliminated from the business.
Big data increases the business efficiency: The complete efficiency of a business can
also automatically increases with the usage of big data tool. In other words efficiency of a
business boosts up with the digital technologies8. Regardless of location and time the users can
use tools like Google map, Google earth, social media etc. It saves the total amount of money
and time for the application.
Big data improved the business pricing: In order to understand the current status of
business intelligence tool stands very helpful technology to be applied in the business
organizations. In order to evaluate the detailed view of business budget rather finance, big data is
helpful because it can eventually deliver clear picture of the business to the strategy developers.
7 Hashem, Ibrahim Abaker Targio, Ibrar Yaqoob, Nor Badrul Anuar, Salimah Mokhtar, Abdullah Gani, and Samee
Ullah Khan. "The rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research issues." Information Systems 47
(2015): 98-115.
8 Verhoef, Peter C., Edwin Kooge, and Natasha Walk. Creating value with big data analytics: Making smarter
marketing decisions. Routledge, 2016.

5OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
Compete with big business: Application of big data tools allow a business to create new
competitive strategies for other businesses9. Apart from this, any business will become much
complicated with the adoption of big data tool in their afield of application.
Allowance to focus on the local experiences: In order to gain competitive advantages
from the competitive market it is necessary for any business to understand the business
environment. For local competitive advantages the application of big data tool is very much
helpful because it allows the users to zoom in on the local business environment10. Once a
business will get familiar about its consumer’s needs and demand that much sooner it will be
able to develop its competitive strategies as well.
Sales and loyalty increases: The loyalty and rate of sales increases with the help of big
data tools. Big data tool helps to tailor the product and services based on the exact requirements
and demands of the consumers. It can be said that, big data helps the operation and strategy
developers to get to know more about their consumer’s demand and requirements. As much a
business will be able to meet the requirements of the consumers that much it can grab new
consumers. Not only new consumers but also a business can retain its existing consumers as well
with the usage of bi data application11. Digital footprint is a term that is left by the consumers
with a single usage. On the other hand, a digital footprint is also left while a client browse online
9 Hashem, Ibrahim Abaker Targio, Ibrar Yaqoob, Nor Badrul Anuar, Salimah Mokhtar, Abdullah Gani, and
Samee Ullah Khan. "The rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research
issues." Information Systems 47 (2015): 98-115.
10 Xu, Zhenning, Gary L. Frankwick, and Edward Ramirez. "Effects of big data analytics and traditional
marketing analytics on new product success: A knowledge fusion perspective." Journal of Business
Research 69, no. 5 (2016): 1562-1566.
11 Hilbert, Martin. "Big data for development: A review of promises and challenges." Development Policy
Review 34, no. 1 (2016): 135-174.

6OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
or post on the social media. With the browsing time and activity regarding the company in the
social media, the loyalty of a consumer can be measured. The rate of sales also increases with the
increasing loyalty of the consumers.
Challenges of big data
Besides opportunities many challenges are also associated to big data application.
During the applications of big data tools these challenges should be mitigated accordingly12. Big
data application handling is a complex job. The lists of challenges associated to big data are as
follows:
Uncertainty of data management: One of the most disruptive challenges of big data is
the usage of wide range innovative tools of data management as well as frameworks for the
designs those are dedicated for supporting the operational and analytical processing. The design
framework used in case of big data is different from SQL which differ the storage of big data
from traditional database management system13. Due to wider range of application of big data
(NOSQL tools) in business and marketing uncertainty with data management are occurring
spontaneously.
Security challenge: In case of big data application another major challenges that may
interrupt the business success include security. Big data deals with management large amount of
12 Bahrami, Mehdi, and Mukesh Singhal. "The role of cloud computing architecture in big data."
In Information granularity, big data, and computational intelligence, pp. 275-295. Springer, Cham, 2015.
13 Wang, Yichuan, LeeAnn Kung, and Terry Anthony Byrd. "Big data analytics: Understanding its capabilities and
potential benefits for healthcare organizations." Technological Forecasting and Social Change 126 (2018): 3-13.

7OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
data14. Therefore, if enough security options are not considered by the business organizations
then information may be lost or misused by the external attackers.
Gathering data into a big data structure: This may be obvious that the intention of a big
data management includes analyzing and processing of large amount of data. Many people are
there who have analyzed data for the big data platform. However, due to lack of understanding
about the complexity of big data application during transition, access and data delivery
challenges may raise. The main factors those are highlighted as the main challenges of big data
include data transmission, access and data loading. Again in the conventional data sets, the need
to navigate transformation and the extractions are not stand as limited.
Syncing across the data sources: During transmission of normal data into big data it may
happen that, the sources of data are also migrating. Due to the breakage of data sequence and
improper source management challenges may occur in big data application.
Assorted challenges: During the integration of bog data again challenges may occur. The
challenges included in this big data application include data integration, availability of skills,
cost for the solution, data volume, data transformations etc. It is not necessary that all time the
structure of the data will be similar15. Therefore, integration of data from different domain or
sources is difficult to combine. This kind of combination is time taken as well as costly. Again
these types of combination of data are again difficult to process. The validations for these data
sets are fulfilled during data transferring phase from one source to another.
14 Chatfield, Akemi, Christopher Reddick, and Wisam Al-Zubaidi. "Capability challenges in transforming
government through open and big data: Tales of two cities." (2015)
15 Khan, Nawsher, Ibrar Yaqoob, Ibrahim Abaker Targio Hashem, Zakira Inayat, Mahmoud Ali, Waleed
Kamaleldin, Muhammad Alam, Muhammad Shiraz, and Abdullah Gani. "Big data: survey, technologies,
opportunities, and challenges." The Scientific World Journal 2014 (2014).

8OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
Data privacy and security: For individual companies which are using the big data as a
tool for their business success are facing challenges due to lack of data security and data privacy.
It is necessary for any company, who is using big data application to adopt proper encryption
algorithm16. Encryption helps to maintain the security of any business organization or marketing.
Encryption technology encrypts or encodes information that cannot be access without
appropriate decryption key17. Thus, due to improper usage of security aspects data may be
hijacked which is another challenge for the companies who are using the application of big data.
Big data is a competitive advantage for business and marketing
In order to outperform the peers of the any business the usage of big data has become a
very much common technologies nowadays. For innovation, competition and capturing values
most of the industries, exiting competitors and even other new business entrants are using the
strategic concept of big data application. In order to create business opportunities and completely
new categories of business big data may integrate and analyze the industry data. With the help of
big data, companies can also hold sufficient data regarding products, services, buyers, sellers and
performance and behavior of the consumers towards the market or industry18. The business
process can be optimized and understand easily with big data. Though the predictive models
generated from the social media data and web searching the stock can be easily optimized by the
retailers.
16 Zhou, Zhi-Hua, Nitesh V. Chawla, Yaochu Jin, and Graham J. Williams. "Big data opportunities and
challenges: Discussions from data analytics perspectives [discussion forum]." IEEE Computational Intelligence
Magazine 9, no. 4 (2014): 62-74
17 Wixom, Barbara, Thilini Ariyachandra, David E. Douglas, Michael Goul, Babita Gupta, Lakshmi S. Iyer,
Uday R. Kulkarni, John G. Mooney, Gloria E. Phillips-Wren, and Ozgur Turetken. "The current state of
business intelligence in academia: The arrival of big data." CAIS 34 (2014): 1.
18 Chatfield, Akemi, Christopher Reddick, and Wisam Al-Zubaidi. "Capability challenges in transforming
government through open and big data: Tales of two cities." (2015).

9OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
Conclusion
From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, big data tool provides biggest game
changing opportunities as well as paradigm shift for the marketing from the beginning of
invention of internet going mainstreams. It also offers the even enhancing volume, velocity,
variability and complexity of information. Big data is capable to create a secure relationship
between the consumers and the service providers and also with the business employees that may
automatically lead the business towards marketing success. Due to excessive amount of data,
organizational complexity and frequently changing behavior of the consumers the market level
competition is also increasing should be strictly controlled for business level success. It is the
responsibility of the business owners to adopt advanced technical excellences to avoid business
level operational and functional disruptions. There are multiple big data that are showing
extreme possibility to drive the marketing impact in the management domain of the consumers.
Thus, it can be said that big data helps to create consumers centric approach to influence product
development and pricing. In order to identify the potential ability of big data technology
respective challenges and opportunity of big data are elaborated in this essay.
References
Baesens, Bart, Ravi Bapna, James R. Marsden, Jan Vanthienen, and J. Leon Zhao.
"TRANSFORMATIONAL ISSUES OF BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS IN NETWORKED
BUSINESS." MIS quarterly 40, no. 4 (2016).
Bahrami, Mehdi, and Mukesh Singhal. "The role of cloud computing architecture in big data."
In Information granularity, big data, and computational intelligence, pp. 275-295. Springer,
Cham, 2015.

10OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
Bello-Orgaz, Gema, Jason J. Jung, and David Camacho. "Social big data: Recent achievements
and new challenges." Information Fusion 28 (2016): 45-59.
Chatfield, Akemi, Christopher Reddick, and Wisam Al-Zubaidi. "Capability challenges in
transforming government through open and big data: Tales of two cities." (2015).
Donnelly, Christina, Geoff Simmons, Gillian Armstrong, and Andrew Fearne. "Digital loyalty
card ‘big data’and small business marketing: Formal versus informal or
complementary?." International Small Business Journal 33, no. 4 (2015): 422-442.
Hashem, Ibrahim Abaker Targio, Ibrar Yaqoob, Nor Badrul Anuar, Salimah Mokhtar, Abdullah
Gani, and Samee Ullah Khan. "The rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open
research issues." Information Systems 47 (2015): 98-115.
Hilbert, Martin. "Big data for development: A review of promises and challenges." Development
Policy Review 34, no. 1 (2016): 135-174.
Khan, Nawsher, Ibrar Yaqoob, Ibrahim Abaker Targio Hashem, Zakira Inayat, Mahmoud Ali,
Waleed Kamaleldin, Muhammad Alam, Muhammad Shiraz, and Abdullah Gani. "Big data:
survey, technologies, opportunities, and challenges." The Scientific World Journal 2014 (2014).
Newell, Sue, and Marco Marabelli. "Strategic opportunities (and challenges) of algorithmic
decision-making: A call for action on the long-term societal effects of ‘datification’." The
Journal of Strategic Information Systems 24, no. 1 (2015): 3-14.
Riggins, Frederick J., and Samuel Fosso Wamba. "Research directions on the adoption, usage,
and impact of the internet of things through the use of big data analytics." In System Sciences
(HICSS), 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on, pp. 1531-1540. IEEE, 2015.

11OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA
Sun, Zhaohao, Huasheng Zou, and Kenneth Strang. "Big data analytics as a service for business
intelligence." In Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, pp. 200-211. Springer,
Cham, 2015.
Verhoef, Peter C., Edwin Kooge, and Natasha Walk. Creating value with big data analytics:
Making smarter marketing decisions. Routledge, 2016.
Wang, Yichuan, LeeAnn Kung, and Terry Anthony Byrd. "Big data analytics: Understanding its
capabilities and potential benefits for healthcare organizations." Technological Forecasting and
Social Change 126 (2018): 3-13.
Xu, Zhenning, Gary L. Frankwick, and Edward Ramirez. "Effects of big data analytics and
traditional marketing analytics on new product success: A knowledge fusion
perspective." Journal of Business Research 69, no. 5 (2016): 1562-1566.
Zhou, Zhi-Hua, Nitesh V. Chawla, Yaochu Jin, and Graham J. Williams. "Big data opportunities
and challenges: Discussions from data analytics perspectives [discussion forum]." IEEE
Computational Intelligence Magazine 9, no. 4 (2014): 62-74.