Mahir, a student studying at Bangladesh University of Professionals in marketing, has a smartphone, which is synced with his smartwatch and smart TV as well. He can check his messages and notifications from his smartwatch and at the same time, change TV channels through his smartphone. These devices are interconnected to each other and can use the data from any of the devices, for example, your smartwatch shows who have called you, discovering the contact information from your smartphone. This is how the IoT, commonly known as the “Internet of Things”, is using the connectedness of the multiple devices of the same user to gather data.
The Internet of Behaviour (IoB) takes this process to a further extent. The IoB collects the digital footprints of people’s data from different sources (like IoT), analyses them and finally uses this information to influence the behaviour of the user. Simply, it is just taking the IoT to the next step.
According to Gartner, which is the world’s leading research and advisory company, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, about 40 per cent of people will have tracked their behaviour via the IoB globally by 2023. As the world is emerging, the data revolution is paving the way for a legendary transformation of the digital ecosystem. Digital dust of users or customers were never found to be so crucial till this decade. The global IoT market is predicted to be valued at $1.7 trillion at the end of 2019 and has a further perspective to generate $4 trillion to $11 trillion in financial benefit by the year 2025. The collection of usage data and data by IoT devices provides valuable information about users’ behaviour, interests, and preferences. This is what made IoB such a unique tool. It helps to know the psychology of the customer from the business perspective accurately every time.
Usage scenario in businesses of Bangladesh
Businesses can build a strong brand image, gain customer insight, develop strategies and even increase productivity by using IoB.
Big data
With the IoTs, one can access information from multiple access points of contact. It allows one to explore the customer journey from start to finish. Thus, businesses can gain a large amount of mixed and complex real-time data. By using big data analytics further, businesses can easily curve out the information needed and understand customer preferences. This is where the IoB concept comes in. By using IoB & big data, businesses can have more accurate information about their customers. At the same time, big data is cheap, fast and more accurate than traditional data analysis systems. The faster route businesses will take to adopt these techniques, the more advanced they will be to become a market leader. Many tech giants around the world like Netflix and Amazon have started using these which are proving to be fruitful for producing greater customer experience. In Bangladesh, Dhaka CMH, Square Hospital uses Big Data to assort patient profiles and use the database and patient history to suggest cost-effective medicines to them
Marketing research
For any business, it is a must for choosing a niche market or target market. To divide the customer base into segments, businesses need to find basic characteristics such as gender, age, location, preference, culture etc. of the customer. However, the collection and processing of these types of data can be obtained easily through the IoT. While with the traditional system it would be so problematic and time-consuming, most of the target customers' basic information can be gathered from their IoT with super ease. With this, if companies can adapt IoB, the algorithms will be configured so that they can anticipate the desires and behaviour of the customers and thus can conduct extensive market research and accordingly choose a market very swiftly.
In Bangladesh, LightCastle and LankaBangla are some of the leading companies in the sector. The B2B sector in this direction is developing a little faster than B2C. But with the rise of IoB at home, companies can divide their target audience into even smaller niches to develop tailor-made offerings for their target audience.
Access to consumer lifestyle information
The concept of IoB includes an analysis of consumer behaviour on social media networks and other platforms and information about their daily lifestyle. Data is collected using the IoT, which can be used by the average consumers: thermostats, smart home appliance systems, wearable devices, etc. All these devices are part of our life, which means they can be used to obtain data on trends in each user’s lifestyle, which in turn gives an understanding of how and when certain products or services are used, for example, one Fahim someday this month searched about how to lose weight on Google and the next day he noticed an ad for treadmill and weight cutting by Gym and Supplements Center of Bangladesh.
Mobile phone operators
The IoB or even big data approach is yet not a very popular concept in Bangladesh in terms of conducting business tactics in Bangladesh. However, it has a great potential for business. For understanding this, one can look at mobile phone industry in Bangladesh. There are more or less 100 million mobile phone users in our country. Many of them use smartphones while using SIM cards. Many times, mobile phone users are quite annoyed by unnecessary offers and irrelevant information pushing. It would be more effective if they sent only the offers which may be proven beneficial to customers. Mobile phone operators can conduct IoT-IoB based technology to understand their customer behavioural pattern and market them accordingly, leading to a success in business.
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