More than simply bits and bytes, big data is now a multibillion-dollar business opportunity. Savvy organizations, from retailers to manufacturers, are fast discovering the power of turning consumers' ZIP codes and buying histories into bottom-line-enhancing insights.
In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of McKinsey & Co., estimates that big data can increase profits in the retail sector by a staggering 60 percent. And a recent Boston Consulting Group study reveals that personal data can help companies achieve greater business efficiencies and customize new products.
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But while harnessing the power of data analytics is clearly a competitive advantage, overzealous data mining can easily backfire. As companies become experts at slicing and dicing data to reveal details as personal as mortgage defaults and heart attack risks, the threat of egregious privacy violations grows.
Just ask Kord Davis. A digital strategist and author of Ethics of Big Data: Balancing Risk and Innovation, Davis says, "The values that you infuse into your data-handling practices can have some very real-world consequences."
Take Nordstrom, for example. The upscale retailer used sensors from analytics vendor Euclid to cull shopping information from customers' smartphones each time they connected to a store's Wi-Fi service -- a move that drew widespread criticism from privacy advocates. (Nordstrom is no longer using the analytics service.)
Hip clothing retailer Urban Outfitters is facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly violating consumer protection laws by telling shoppers who pay by credit card that they had to provide their ZIP codes -- which is not true -- and then using that information to obtain the shoppers' addresses. Facebook is often at the center of a data privacy controversy, whether it's defending its own enigmatic privacy policies or responding to reports that it gave private user data to the National Security Agency (NSA). And the story of how retail behemoth Target was able to deduce that a teenage shopper was pregnant before her father even knew is the stuff of marketing legend.
Online finger-wagging, lawsuits, disgruntled customers -- they're the unfortunate byproducts of what many people perceive to be big data abuses. According to a September 2013 study from data privacy management company Truste, 1 of 3 Internet users say they have stopped using a company's website or have stopped doing business with a company altogether because of privacy concerns.
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