Drivers for Big Data? - Big Data Analytics: Disruptive Technologies for Changing the Game - page 10

person A calling person B, were analyzed. By synthesizing call information and
abstracting communications networks, we discovered webs of communications
across individuals. We also used the customer churn information to correlate
churn among leaders to subsequent churn among followers. Here are some of the
highlights from one of the experiments I helped conduct:
• Leaders were 1.2 times more likely to churn compared with non-leaders.
• There were two types of leaders: disseminating leaders who were
connected to their group through outgoing calls, and authority leaders
who were connected through a larger proportion of incoming calls.
• When a disseminating leader churned, additional churns were 28.5 times
more likely. When an authority leader churned, additional churns were
19.9 times more likely.
• Typically, there was a very limited time between leaders' churn and the
followers' churn.
Social groups can be inferred from any type of communication—emails,
SMS texts, calls, Facebook friendships, and so on. It is interesting to see strong
statistics associated with leaders' inluence on the group.
There are many ways to utilize social networks to inluence purchase and
reuse:
• Studying consumer experience —A fair amount of this data is unstruc-
tured. By analyzing the text for sentiments, intensity, readership, related
blogs, referrals, and other information, we can organize the data into
positive and negative inluences and their impact on the customer base.
• Organizing customer experience —We can provide reviews to a
prospective buyer, so they can gauge how others evaluated the product.
• Inluencing social networks —We can provide marketing material,
product changes, company directions, and celebrity endorsements to
social networks, so that social media may inluence and enhance the
buzz.
• Feedback to products, operations, or marketing —By using information
generated by social media, we can rapidly make changes in the product
mix and marketing to improve the offering to customers.
Society has always played a major role in our evaluation process. However,
the Internet and social networking have radically altered our access to informa-
tion. I may choose to “like” a product on Facebook, and my network now has