BIG DATA: A vision of tomorrow

by: Mayank Gaur

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is called big data. The hot IT buzzword of 2012, big data has become viable as cost-effective approaches have emerged to tame the volume, velocity and variability of massive data. There are five broad ways in which using big data can create value. First, big data can unlock significant value by making information transparent and usable at much higher frequency. Second, as organizations create and store more transactional data in digital form, they can collect more accurate and detailed performance information on everything from product inventories to sick days, and therefore expose variability and boost performance. Leading companies are using data collection and analysis to conduct controlled experiments to make better management decisions; others are using data for basic low-frequency forecasting to high-frequency now casting to adjust their business levers just in time. Third, big data allows ever-narrower segmentation of customers and therefore much more precisely tailored products or services. Fourth, sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision-making. Finally, big data can be used to improve the development of the next generation of products and services. For instance, manufacturers are using data obtained from sensors embedded in products to create innovative after-sales service offerings such as proactive maintenance (preventive measures that take place before a failure occurs or is even noticed). The past decade’s successful web startups are prime examples of big data used as an enabler of new products and services. For example, by combining a large number of signals from a user’s actions and those of their friends, Facebook has been able to craft a highly personalized user experience and create a new kind of advertising business. Facebook handles 40 billion photos from its user base. Walmart handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour, which is imported into databases estimated to contain more than 2.5 petabytes of data — the equivalent of 167 times the information contained in all the books in the US Library of Congress. It’s no coincidence that the lion’s share of ideas and tools underpinning big data have emerged from Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook.

 

Big data spans four dimensions: Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Veracity.

Volume: Enterprises are awash with ever-growing data of all types, easily amassing terabytes—even petabytes—of information.

• Turn 12 terabytes of Tweets created each day into improved product sentiment analysis
• Convert 350 billion annual meter readings to better predict power consumption

Velocity: Sometimes 2 minutes is too late. For time-sensitive processes such as catching fraud, big data must be used as it streams into your enterprise in order to maximize its value. 

• Scrutinize 5 million trade events created each day to identify potential fraud 
• Analyze 500 million daily call detail records in real-time to predict customer churn faster

Variety: Big data is any type of data - structured and unstructured data such as text, sensor data, audio, video, click streams, log files and more. New insights are found when analyzing these data types together

• Monitor 100’s of live video feeds from surveillance cameras to target points of interest
• Exploit the 80% data growth in images, video and documents to improve customer satisfaction

Veracity: 1 in 3 business leaders don’t trust the information they use to make decisions. How can you act upon information if you don’t trust it? Establishing trust in big data presents a huge challenge as the variety and number of sources grows.

 

 

Big Data in India’s Scenario-

• Indians are large users of facebook, you tube, internet, twitter etc. In addition, Indian companies generate a lot of data. Clubbing internal data and public data can help Indian organizations fine tune their marketing strategies.
• India has the second largest population in the world. The census can be anlaysed through technologies used in analysing big data. Even aadhaar has unique compute and data challenges that exhibits all characteristics of Big Data – Volume, variety and Velocity. The challenge is to derive value from these attributes.
• One of the biggest sectors to gain from big data will be medical research sector.
• Since India’s IT sector is growing leaps and bounds, Big Data is an opportunity for all IT firms in India.

 

But there are several issues needs to be addressed to capture the full potential of big data. Policies related to privacy, security, intellectual property, and even liability will need to be addressed in a big data world. Organizations need not only to put the right talent and technology in place but also structure workflows and incentives to optimize the use of big data. Access to data is critical—companies will increasingly need to integrate information from multiple data sources, often from third parties, and the incentives have to be in place to enable this. 

 

MICRO MARKETING

By: Manushi Kapur

Micro-marketing is a marketing strategy in which advertising efforts are focused on a small group of highly-targeted consumers. Micromarketing requires a company to narrowly define a particular audience by a particular characteristic, such as ZIP code or job title, and design campaigns for that particular segment. It can be a more expensive technique due to customization and lack of an economy of scale.

Essentially, it involves personalization of messages to individual consumers in the context of direct marketing. Micromarketing has come to refer to marketing strategies which are variously customized to either local markets, to different market segments, or to the individual customer.

We all know what mass marketing looks like — grand gestures, splashy creative and big budget media buys designed to reach and appeal to the widest possible audience. The problem? This type of marketing is less likely than ever to actually appeal to anyone at all.

Big companies like Ford, Coke, Wal-Mart and Samsung have used micromarketing because micromarketing is all about doing the right small things to get big results, it’s less about the size of the organization and more about the willingness to think differently and take new approaches.

For instance, in order for the company Ford to move into micro marketing it had to look into specific needs and wants of different individuals and manufacture an automobile that could fulfill them. Thus, Ford could introduce a new idea of allowing consumers to detail/customize a car or in other words create their own car. For instance, if a customer were to choose the silver Ford Focus, he/she is only offered the charcoal coloured interior. Ford could open its horizons and allow consumers to choose from a large number of different interior colours. This would allow individual consumers to have a car made which is fit for them and only them.

With micromarketing, the approach calls for getting to know the client’s needs, likes, and dislikes very well. This makes it easier to match that consumer with the goods or services that are being offered. The approach is often successful because the client receives a sense of being important to the marketer and sees the efforts to connect as being on a more personal level rather than a general one.

Small businesses often use micromarketing as a means of establishing and growing a client base with a defined geographical area. For example, a small grocery store chain with outlets in three different cities could go with the more common approach of carrying the same produce in each store. With a micromarketing approach, each store would carry a core group of fresh produce, but would augment it with other produce that is of particular interest to consumers who frequent those individual stores.

To avoid waste, specific consumer segments must be defined at both macro and micro (targeted) levels to ensure long-term strategic objectives and near-term responsiveness. Marketers must also be able to determine the attitudinal "availability" of consumers, not only for their brands and competitive reputation .

So, put on your marketing caps and look around. You are sure to see some of your favorite companies doing micro marketing ….!

MYSTERY BEHIND GOLD PRICES

By: Akshay Bansal

History 

Gold has been widely used throughout the world as a vehicle for monetary exchange, either by issuance and recognition of gold coins or other bare metal quantities, or through gold-convertible paper instruments by establishing gold standards in which the total value of issued money is represented in a store of gold reserves. However, production has not grown in relation to the world's economies. Today, gold mining output is declining. With the sharp growth of economies in the 20th century, and increasing foreign exchange, the world's gold reserves and their trading market have become a small fraction of all markets and fixed exchange rates of currencies to gold were no longer sustained.

Pricing of Gold and Determining Factors 

Today, like most commodities, the price of gold is driven by supply and demand as well as speculation. However unlike most other commodities, saving and disposal plays a larger role in affecting its price than its consumption. Most of the gold ever mined still exists in accessible form, such as bullion and mass-produced jewellery, with little value over its fine weight — and is thus potentially able to come back onto the gold market for the right price. The actual price of gold is determined by how much gold the World Gold Council is willing to sell. As with any market, the price is a factor of supply and demand.

Most people look at the price per troy ounce of gold in the same way they consider the stock market. As investment vehicles, both move up and down, and it’s often difficult to determine what causes the fluctuations. In reality, the price of gold is closely connected to a few core factors. These factors appear simple on the surface, but are part of a complex system that can be confusing to novices.

In this article, we’ll briefly describe some of the things that influence the movements of the price of gold. We’ll take a look at currency inflation, the role of central banks, and other dynamics that cause an increase in demand. This is not meant to be a comprehensive tutorial. Rather, it will provide a basic framework for understanding how gold prices move.

Currency Inflation

Inflation is often thought of as an increase in the prices of good. For example, when consumers visit the grocery store and notice the price of fruit has increased, they attribute the increase to inflation. This perspective is inaccurate. Inflation is technically an increase in the money supply. This has a direct effect on how gold prices move in relation to a country’s currency.

To explain, suppose you used every U.S. dollar to purchase every product in the world. Further suppose the money supply is then doubled. The extra dollars now floating through the system represent inflation. The value of every existing dollar declines by half. Essentially, it would now require two dollars to purchase something that was once sold for a single dollar.

Gold is used as an exchange unit of value because it cannot be arbitrarily produced. It is a near-perfect store of value against supply and demand. When the supply of dollars (or any currency) is inflated, the price of gold increases as the per-unit value of the currency declines. Conversely, during times of monetary contraction (i.e. when dollars are “soaked up”), the price of gold goes down.

Central Banks

The above discussion leads directly into the role of central banks in the context of how they influence gold prices. They can do so in two distinct ways. First, central banks can decide to sell a portion of their reserves or buy more on the market. The amount sold each year is limited to 400 tonnes to help avoid a glut in the market that drives prices downward.

The second way central banks influence the price of gold is through loan agreements with the central banks of other nations. This area is incredibly complex and involves the International Monetary Fund.

Both levers (i.e. purchase or sale on the market and loan agreements) have a powerful influence on interest rates and thus, the sale of government bonds. For this reason, central banks usually try to keep the price of gold from climbing.

Other Factors

Several other factors can trigger a surge of demand for gold, which pushes its price upward. For example, during times of political unrest and war, countries often travel a path of monetary expansion. This causes the nation’s citizens to lose faith in the value of their currency. As a result, they move their assets into gold.

Mining production can also play a role. While gold cannot be arbitrarily produced, it is mined each year throughout the world. Typically, only a small amount is mined, which means the world’s “above surface” supply remains relatively static.

Large deficits also support high gold prices. When deficits become extremely high, there is a risk of default. This drives people from the nation’s currency into gold, triggering another surge in demand (and price).

Tracking and predicting fluctuations in the price of gold is difficult because there are so many factors at work. If you’re thinking about selling your gold jewellery (e.g. watches, necklaces, earrings, etc.) to take advantage of the current high prices, now may be an ideal time. We may look back in a year and wonder if we’ll ever see the current peaks again.

Indian Market and Gold Prices

The gold rate in today's market depends entirely on the demand and availability of the metal. So unpredictable is the gold rate that not even those in the business are able to forecast what the price might be in the near future, stating that trying to graph the gold rate over a period of time would be inaccurate as well as ineffective. But those in the commodities market seem to have a batter grasp on the gold rate because gold is a commodity and gold rate analysis is possible when using only that commodity for calculation. And they state that even though the analysis is so complex, it will provide an unambiguous picture of the gold rate in the future.

We find that in Indian market, there is more fluctuation in the gold rate than in other markets. Indian buyers are more emotional in their investments because their traditions play a large role. Also, in Hinduism, God's word carries a lot of weight. Gold is pure as well as auspicious, meaning that it bodes well for the future, promising success and good fortune and is something which should never be sold unless one is focused to do so by circumstance. Indian buyers consider their traditions before investing - and then go ahead if all seems well.