IBM CXO Tweetchat, Segmentation and Big Data, with Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro

By Gregory Piatetsky, Aug 5, 2013.

July 29 #CXO Tweetchat, hosted by IBM and featuring me as a guest expert was quite an experience. We had prepared 9 questions which focused on the issue –

What customer segmentation is still meaningful in the age of Big Data? Are demographic, psychographic, lifestyle, and other breakdowns made obsolete in the face of Big Data-powered personalized predictions and recommendations?

The experience was very “firehosish”, with over 900 tweets from about 300 participants. The intensity of tweets was such that our hashtag #cxo actually made the Top 10 Twitter trends, and at the end of the Tweetchat #cxo even briefly became n. 1 Twitter trend, ahead of iPhone 5C, #Bulger, and FBI !

Here are some of the more popular tweets:

Q3: What are key steps to using analytics to develop needs based customer segments?

@kdnuggets: A3: Capture recent and relevant customer behavior; augment with external data; use advanced analytics to develop models #cxo

@kdnuggets: A3: Develop the right measures to differentiate segments and operationalize them in a clear, cost-effective way. #cxo

@IBMbigdata: A3: #Segmentation starts with objective refinement and collection of enterprise-wide biz knowledge & data discovery #cxo

@kdnuggets: A3: HBR blog argues for segmention on “jobs”: customer desires. Nice idea, but can it be done? t.co/bOkeV6fNf3 #cxo

@zacharyjeans: A3 Recently been reading @FTC guidlines (I know, I’m a dork), and see a basic theme: Customer must consent to data collection and use. #cxo

Q6: Privacy/legal/ethical issues – can segments be based on lifestyle, age, pregnancy, race? Known vs Inferred ?

@kdnuggets: A6: When Target predictive analytics identified a young woman pregnancy before her father knew, it was creepy #cxo

@kdnuggets: A6: However, unless prohibited, companies will use analytics on all data, because they work and increase ROI #cxo

@kdnuggets: .@AmyL_Bishop @cloudspark demographics < psychographics, but psychographics < actual user behavior #cxo

Q8: Does the trend toward customer experience personalization (customer as a “segment” of one) spell the death knell of traditional customer segmentation (i.e., target customers as groups)?

@kdnuggets: A8: The trend is towards a segment of 1, and even less than one – a customer may have many personas #cxo

@marmarlade: #cxo @IBMbigdata A8 “From one conversation with a million, to a million conversations with one.”

See a Storify of the July 29 Tweetchat at

www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/solving-segmentation-big-data-x