Behavioral analytics

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Behavioral analytics is a recent[ when? ] advancement in business analytics that reveals new insights into the behavior of consumers on eCommerce platforms, online games, web and mobile applications, and Internet of Things (IoT). The rapid increase in the volume of raw event data generated by the digital world enables methods that go beyond demographics and other traditional metrics that tell us what kind of people took what actions in the past. Behavioral analysis focuses on understanding how consumers act and why, enabling predictions about how they are likely to act in the future. It enables marketers to make the right offers to consumer segments at the right time.

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Behavioral analytics can be useful for authentication as for security purposes. [1] It uses non-identifiable but individually unique factors to confirm who the user is. The identity of the user is authenticated in the background using factor such as mouse movement to typing speed and habits, login history network detail like IP address, browser used, etc.

Behavioral analytics utilizes the massive volumes of raw user event data captured during sessions in which consumers use application, game, or website, including traffic data like navigation path, clicks, social media interactions, purchasing decisions and marketing responsiveness. Also, the event-data can include advertising metrics like click-to-conversion time, as well as comparisons between other metrics like the monetary value of an order and the amount of time spent on the site. [2] These data points are then compiled and analyzed, whether by looking at session progression from when a user first entered the platform until a sale was made, or what other products a user bought or looked at before this purchase. Behavioral analysis allows future actions and trends to be predicted based on the collection of such data.

Since the analysis requires collection and aggregation of large amounts of personal data, including highly sensitive one (such as sexual orientation or sexual preferences, health issues, location) which is then traded between hundreds of parties involved in targeted advertising, behavioral analytics is causing significant concerns about privacy violations. [3] [4]

While business analytics has a more broad focus on the who, what, where and when of business intelligence, behavioral analytics narrows that scope, allowing one to take seemingly unrelated data points in order to extrapolate, predict and determine errors and future trends. It takes a more holistic and human view of data, connecting individual data points to tell us not only what is happening, but also how and why it is happening.

Examples and real world applications

Visual Representation of Events that Make Up Behavioral Analysis Visual Representation of Events that Make Up Behavioral Analysis.png
Visual Representation of Events that Make Up Behavioral Analysis

Data shows that a large percentage of users using a certain eCommerce platform found it by searching for “Thai food” on Google. After landing on the homepage, most people spent some time on the “Asian Food” page and then logged off without placing an order. Looking at each of these events as separate data points does not represent what is really going on and why people did not make a purchase. However, viewing these data points as a representation of overall user behavior enables one to interpolate how and why users acted in this particular case.

Behavioral analytics looks at all site traffic and page views as a timeline of connected events that did not lead to orders. Since most users left after viewing the “Asian Food” page, there could be a disconnect between what they are searching for on Google and what the “Asian Food” page displays. Knowing this, a quick look at the “Asian Food” page reveals that it does not display Thai food prominently and thus people do not think it is actually offered, even though it is.

Behavioral analytics is popular in commercial environments. Amazon.com is a leader in using behavioral analytics to recommend additional products that customers are likely to buy based on their previous purchasing patterns on the site. [5] Behavioral analytics is also used by Target to suggest products to customers in their retail stores, while political campaigns use it to determine how potential voters should be approached. In addition to retail and political applications, behavioral analytics is also used by banks and manufacturing firms to prioritize leads generated by their websites. Behavioral analytics also allow developers to manage users in online-gaming and web applications. [5]

Amongst others, IBM and Intel are creating advanced analytics solutions. In retail, this is IoT for tracking shopping behaviors (in-store tracking). [6] [7]

Types

Components

An ideal behavioral analytics solution would include:

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Analytics</span> Discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Data management</span> Disciplines related to managing data as a resource

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Cohort analysis is a kind of behavioral analytics that breaks the data in a data set into related groups before analysis. These groups, or cohorts, usually share common characteristics or experiences within a defined time-span. Cohort analysis allows a company to "see patterns clearly across the life-cycle of a customer, rather than slicing across all customers blindly without accounting for the natural cycle that a customer undergoes." By seeing these patterns of time, a company can adapt and tailor its service to those specific cohorts. While cohort analysis is sometimes associated with a cohort study, they are different and should not be viewed as one and the same. Cohort analysis is specifically the analysis of cohorts in regards to big data and business analytics, while in cohort study, data is broken down into similar groups.

Predictive analytics is a form of business analytics applying machine learning to generate a predictive model for certain business applications. As such, it encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from predictive modeling and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events. It represents a major subset of machine learning applications; in some contexts, it is synonymous with machine learning.

Path analysis, is the analysis of a path, which is a portrayal of a chain of consecutive events that a given user or cohort performs during a set period of time while using a website, online game, or eCommerce platform. As a subset of behavioral analytics, path analysis is a way to understand user behavior in order to gain actionable insights into the data. Path analysis provides a visual portrayal of every event a user or cohort performs as part of a path during a set period of time.

Business analytics (BA) refers to the skills, technologies, and practices for iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. Business analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business performance based on data and statistical methods. In contrast, business intelligence traditionally focuses on using a consistent set of metrics to both measure past performance and guide business planning. In other words, business intelligence focusses on description, while business analytics focusses on prediction and prescription.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Funnel analysis</span>

Funnel analysis involves mapping and analyzing a series of events that lead towards a defined goal, like an advertisement-to-purchase journey in online advertising, or the flow that starts with user engagement in a mobile app and ends in a sale on an eCommerce platform. Funnel analyses "are an effective way to calculate conversion rates on specific user behaviors". This can be in the form of a sale, registration, or other intended action from an audience.

In the fields of Information Technology (IT) and Systems Management, IT operations analytics (ITOA) is an approach or method to retrieve, analyze, and report data for IT operations. ITOA may apply big data analytics to large datasets to produce business insights. In 2014, Gartner predicted its use might increase revenue or reduce costs. By 2017, it predicted that 15% of enterprises will use IT operations analytics technologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media analytics</span> Process of gathering and analyzing data from social media networks

Social media analytics or social media monitoring is the process of gathering and analyzing data from social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. A part of social media analytics is called social media monitoring or social listening. It is commonly used by marketers to track online conversations about products and companies. One author defined it as "the art and science of extracting valuable hidden insights from vast amounts of semi-structured and unstructured social media data to enable informed and insightful decision-making."

Data-driven marketing is a process used by marketers to gain insights and identify trends about consumers and how they behave — what they buy, the effectiveness of ads, and how they browse. Modern solutions rely on big data strategies and collect information about consumer interactions and engagements to generate predictions about future behaviors. This kind of analysis involves understanding the data that is already present, the data that can be acquired, and how to organize, analyze, and apply that data to better marketing efforts. The intended goal is generally to enhance and personalize the customer experience. The market research allows for a comprehensive study of preferences.

Guided analytics is a sub-field at the interface of visual analytics and predictive analytics focused on the development of interactive visual interfaces for business intelligence applications. Such interactive applications serve the analyst to take important decisions by easily extracting information from the data.

References

  1. Shah, Saleh, et al. "Compromised user credentials detection in a digital enterprise using behavioral analytics." Future Generation Computer Systems 93 (2019): 407-417.
  2. Yamaguchi, Kohki (6 June 2013). "Leveraging Advertising Data For Behavioral Insights". Analytics & Marketing Column. Marketing Land.
  3. Biddle, Sam (2019-05-20). "Thanks to Facebook, Your Cellphone Company Is Watching You More Closely Than Ever". The Intercept. Retrieved 2019-07-01.
  4. "Goodbye, Chrome: Google's web browser has become spy software". The Washington Post .
  5. 1 2 "Oh behave! How behavioral analytics fuels more personalized marketing" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-07-14.
  6. Gupta, Deepak (2021-12-08). "Council Post: In-Store Tracking: Is It A Threat To Consumer Privacy?". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-02-20.
  7. Max, Ronny (2021-10-27). "19 Technologies of People Tracking". Behavior Analytics Retail. Retrieved 2023-02-20.
  8. Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani; Sihem Amer-Yahia; Alexandre Termier (2015). "Interactive User Group Analysis". Proceedings of the 24th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2015. pp. 403–412. doi:10.1145/2806416.2806519. ISBN   9781450337946. S2CID   7675754.

Further reading