Page 80 - Building Big Data Applications

Chapter 3 Building big data applications 75

capability to deliver the best every week in terms of the product. In terms of how these
vendors have got this branding is where we need to pay attention to the process.
The interactions of the vendors with customers from the first visit when the prospect
arrived at their store to customer conversion, acquisition and follow-up conversations
week over week, led to whispers between friends who meet at the market leading to more
referral of customers, which explodes as the friends who were introduced lead more
friends and the pattern continues to evolve. This continuum is where the word of mouth
marketing plays an excellent role.
The vendors who acquire this popularity also start running their statistics of sales
increase and directly relate the same to newer customers. This leads to better product
procurement at lower price points for their inventory which is sold at a good profit
margin while maintaining a healthy competitive price management. The market style of
management of customers includes statistics of profit management, pricing of inventory
from procurement to sale, the overall calculation of storage of the product, and the ef-
ficiency of managing the location to ensure all customers get their goods and are
serviced.
This entire process tells us three things are important:

The data about the customers
The data about the product
The analytics of the sales
In addition to these things, there are several aspects that are needed to manage and
execute the following:
Collection of data
Governance of the sales
Governance of the customers
Governance of the product
Management of word of mouth marketing
Collection of customer requirements on a weekly basis
Solicitation of feedback
Management of complaints
Let us look at the next sets of information layers before we discuss the process items.
Mall InteractionsdLet us look at the life of customers as we opened up malls and
supermarkets. The customer here is introduced to a concept of self-service of all items
they wish to buy, and even payment is managed by machines in many cases. In this
situation the complexity of understanding the customer and the prospect is very deep
and requires a high degree of efficiency and ease of management and decision support.
The mall activities happen in this order, the business opens every day at 9:00 a.m. and
vendors open at the same time for all types of business including clothing, appliances,
food, electronics, mobile phone services, specialty stores, and more. The prospective
shoppers including customers plan a visit to the mall and often shop during Friday