John Foreman, chief data scientist at email service provider (ESP) Mail Chimp, has written a nice Gigaom on Disney's Big Data efforts.piece at
For years, Disney has done things to make trips convenient in exchange for money. They abolished individiual ride tickets (I still remember E-tickets from our first family trip to Orlando - that seriously dates me) in exchange for daily passes.
In one large family trip that we took to the park many years ago, we used the "Golden Key" credit cards that gave us access to any food option in the park in exchange for paying the food cost for the trip up front.
Disney is now on board with the concept that the convenience is worth more than the money directly.
By creating a new, chic, high-tech accessory of a rubberized visitor band enabled with RFID, Disney can also track everything you do in the park.
John Foreman does a nice job comparing and contrasting with other efforts to track consumer behavior, and the comment thread explores more of the underlying technology.
I have just finished reading "Big Data" by Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, and this is a way for Disney to produce and use what they call "data exhaust". You aren't just using entering the park, paying for a cup of coffee, and using Fast Pass to get on a ride. You are telling Disney how long you spent on Main Street before leaving, what other shops you entered, and what route you took to get to your first ride. You let them know how long you spent together and when you separated from the family.
Do you have access to this level of detail in data as a marketer? You may already even if you don't realize it. My favorite example of this is my supermarket hand held bar scanner.
Giant offers scanners at the entrance that allow me to build up my order as I go, rather than wait until self checkout at the end to scan goods.
The immediate appeal to Giant and marketers seems to be the ability to do real-time marketing and make me offers as I shop.
However, in addition to the same list of goods tied to my loyalty card that they would get at any checkout is a big bonus: a chronology of how long I spend in the store, and how I move around. That is data exhaust.
Will they make use of it? At some point they will if they are not already but they need to plan ahead for it. Most basically, knowing where items are stocked in the store or having passive scanners to track the device is necessary to tie my scanning to location would be important.
What data exhaust are your customers producing? Do you know how to use it? Disney is already on it.
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