Originally published by: Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog on 2012-12-07 08:05:37 by Linda Bustos

“Big Data” has been touted as the next “big thing” in ecommerce. But according to research by Edgell Knowledge Network, only 47% of retailers understand how to apply Big Data to their business. We can expect non-retail ecommerce to be similar.Big Data refers to a large set of data too complex to be handled by conventional database management tools. It’s data that exists beyond your web analytics, ERP, or CRM databases. It often exists outside of your organization, think of customer sentiment and social sharing data owned by Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, or competitive pricing data from comparison shopping engines.Without Big Data, it’s impossible to get a comprehensive cross-touchpoint view of your customer, and fully understand customer behavior in order to make business decisions in real-time. (Even with Big Data, it’s still very difficult to achieve!)This week’s infographic is courtesy of Monetate, and explains structured vs unstructured data, outlines the challenges and goals of Big Data for retail, and how to make a Big Data game plan.

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The Ecommerce Guide to Big Data [Infographic]