Big brands face risks from big data moving too fast for them to keep up. Most brands stick to traditional data practices rather than taking advantage of growing customer data. Meanwhile, data is exploding in amount and value as it is increasingly generated by consumers. Well-managed companies can fail when they cannot adapt to disruptive technologies, allowing others to steal their market. To avoid this, brands must learn to better analyze and use customer data for competitive advantage before disruptors emerge to do so.

1. Big Brands Meet Big Data.
The Newest Innovator’s Dilemma.
Marc Parrish
VP, Customer Retention &
Loyalty Marketing, Barnes & Noble

2. Big Data is moving too fast for Big Brands.
This poses a great risk to the world’s great retailers.
Source: Google Insights News Search

3. They don't pivot…
…or move quickly enough to take advantage of the astounding amount of customer information that's becoming
available. Most brands are sticking with their everyday practices of data management and consumption.

4. Meanwhile, Data is exploding
Amount of Data captured, Percent Generated By Consumers
stored and replicated (making it incredibly valuable)
Source, IDC

5. The Innovator’s Dilemma
Well-managed companies often fail…
20
15
Sales
High Margin
10
Medium Margin
Low Margin
5 Disruptor
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Time 
…. because the same management practices that made them industry leaders
also make it difficult to assimilate the disruptive technologies.
In the end it allows others to steal their market from below.

6. Two Types of Innovations
Sustaining Disruptive
• Improve performance of • Generally underperform
established products established products in
• Meet demands of mainstream mainstream markets
customers in major markets
• Have new features that fringe or
• Products vary in difficulty, cost, new customers value
time to market, etc.
• Established firms • Cheaper, simpler, smaller, more
convenient to use
• Entrant firms

7. Example
(1910)
Sustaining Disruptive
}
}
If I had asked people what they wanted,
they would have said faster horses.
-- Henry Ford?
ford cars manufactured
10,000 1908
472,350 1915
933,720 1920

8. Newer Example
(1955)
Sustaining Disruptive
Living Room Stereo Transistor Radio
$299 $80
($1999 today) ($699 today)

9. Newest Example(s)
(2000)
Sustaining Disruptive

10. Newest Example(s)
(2005)
Sustaining Disruptive

11. The Yellow Pages Response

12. Unsustainable….
Clearly,
manipulating
data well can
reap benefits,
and avoid
the grim reaper.

13. So…..what to do in this scenario?
• Huge Amounts of Data No! Spend more, and
get greedy!
• Dramatically falling
prices
– Cost to store data in
2011 is 88% cheaper
than in 2005.
….. Spend less, get more?
Source, IDC, EMC

14. Why is Big Data so difficult for
Big Brands (and others) to consume?
• No skill set to get inside it,
absorb it, analyze it, mold it
• No democratization of data
across the company that
allows business owners to
incorporate the data into
their plans
• They don't full grasp how Big
Data can be a competitive
advantage!

15. What is the Risk?
• As storage prices drive to a commodity -- the
inevitable consequence of technology --
retailers will increasingly need to compete on
knowledge of their customers, which Big Data
provides.
• Open APIs & Social Media makes customer
preferences open to all, so disruptive
competitors who can offer better customer
insights will emerge (quickly!) and steal your
customers….
• This is “personality-based disintermediation”.

16. The math that creates
innovators (with anxiety)….

17. Source, IDC, EMC

18. Source, IDC, EMC

19. Source, IDC, EMC

20. Source, IDC, EMC

21. The Big Data Gap …
It’s common to all retailers, and easy to overlook.
It will be the difference between merely sustaining,
The faster you close it, the more opportunity you find.
and adopting disruptive innovation.

22. It’s progress or bone pile.

23. Thank You
Marc Parrish
linkedin.com/marcparrish
mparrish@book.com