Uma Ganesh | November 18, 2021 | 
It enables tracking of customer journeys to the fullest extent as well as additional touchpoints for reinforcement or purchase decision
Internet of Behaviours (IoB) is an extension of Internet of Things (IoT) as it has the ability to generate patterns to influence people’s behaviour and therefore is a blend of three fields – technology, data analytics and behavioural psychology. The combination of IoT and IoB is extremely powerful with its ability to influence consumer behaviour and hence digital marketing could use this power as part of its tool kit.
The most visible and successful examples of capitalising on Internet of Behaviours are that of Facebook and Google that throw up advertisements to the surfers at regular intervals based on the granular analysis and understanding they have developed from the behavioural data of customers gathered periodically. However, collection and processing of data from IoT is not straight forward and many companies do not get easy access to this data. With IoT devices expected to increase threefold by 2025, IoT which has so far been seeing traction in the B2B segment, is also expected to have rapid adoption in the consumer segment.
IoB enables customer journeys to be tracked to the fullest extent and provide additional touchpoints for reinforcement or purchase decision. It has the potential to make every milestone stimulating and thus inch customers closer to decision point favouring the product. Thus by being connected on the internet, home gadgets would be an important source to get insights about the lifestyles and mindsets of consumers towards use of products. Service quality and value chain can be significantly enhanced with the help of the data and insights garnered through such an approach.
With the ability to decipher the intent of customers as described by the natural language statements, the significant shift on search engine optimisation would be around intent rather than mere words or keywords describing the product features and usage. Therefore it would be possible to tap the prospects for the offerings with far superior insights on their psychology and an understanding of the likely methods of choice to buy the service or product. By becoming aware of where and when the customer is shopping, it may be possible to send real time intimation to customers about the latest value proposition that may swing the deal favourably towards the offer at hand.
IoB would enable further personalisation through improvements in service quality and efficiency. With the help of IoB, there is an opportunity to enhance the quality of data being collected and combine the data from different sources and get unique insights from such data. In this context, it is going to be increasingly critical for companies to be conscious of customer sensitivities around privacy protection and security considerations.
They need to be cautious about how the data is collected, stored and used and the likely intrusion into private space as well as litigation thereof. Cybercriminals could also play havoc with the sensitive data and therefore it would be important to continue to invest in robust and secure platforms as well as use tools such as confidential computing and advanced encryption tools.
In addition to these considerations, in order to reap the benefits of IoB to its fullest potential, more than the technical capability, designing appropriate approaches incorporating studies to capture psychological aspects and choice of the right statistical tools would be important.
Originally appeared in Financial Express