Data explosion main concern for CMOs, says IBM study

72% of the CMOs are not adequately prepared to effectively build brand loyalty

A new worldwide IBM study of midmarket chief marketing officers (CMOs) showed that building and sustaining brand loyalty is the top concern for today's midmarket CMOs.

But, 72% of them are not adequately prepared to effectively build this loyalty, with 70% saying their main concern is data explosion. Another 68% are feeling ill-prepared to manage the impact of social media.

Data explosion expects them to make sense of highly complex information generated regularly from a variety of sources including social media.

The study, which surveyed1734 CMOs in 19 industries, across 64 countries, said exponential growth in users of mobile devices and social media is said to be creating a new breed of consumers who are digitally savvy and can quickly compare and assess which products and services they want to buy.

Ninety per cent of the world's data has been created in the last two years alone as normal consumers blogs, tweet and post messages in social media.

Adept marketers are incorporating insights gained from social media into their strategies.

The survey also revealed that there was a need for CMOs to pay attention to individuals rather than just markets to be able to get insights into customers' behaviour, values, needs and preferences.

The survey found that 82% of respondents said they used market research to power their strategy decisions, with 26% using blogs, 48% using consumer reviews and 42% using third-party reviews and grading.

Warner Brothers Music Group New York director of direct to consumer marketing Eric Morse said there was a global feeling of a shift from seeing consumers as a market to seeing them as individuals.

IBM Midmarket Business general manager Andy Monshaw said with the explosion of social media, businesses are gaining the opportunity to understand and target the consumer better, that is opening up new avenues for small and midsize businesses to realise the potential of this new information and communication technologies, but face the daunting task of intercepting and interpreting vast quantities of data to find - meaningful insights.

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