Big Data analytics have increasingly gained prominence in business because of the insights they provide regarding emerging trends, behaviors, and preferences. Relying exclusively on big data analytics to address business uncertainties, however, has proven detrimental to sensemaking — more numbers do not necessarily produce more insights. As Madsbjerg and Rasmussen note, “By outsourcing our thinking to Big Data, our ability to make sense of the world by careful observation begins to wither.”
This paper argues for the combined use of big data analytics and thick data ethnography — thick data informing big data and vice versa — a back and forth between what is happening and why. By using ethnographic research methods to observe human behavior and its underlying motivations, we can uncover the needs and desires that drive the emotional lives of customers. Together, big data and thick data generate different types of insights at varying scales and depths, enabling more complete pictures and sound decisions on complex business problems.
In the Knowledge Graph
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