For those who are employed in a business that "touches" data somehow - whether their company collects data, analyzes it, transmits it, or stores and protects it - "Big Data" is likely a term that has, over the past year or two, risen to the fore of their consciousness. Every component within a company that, for example, manufactures and sells ice cream in its own stores - from the R&D team that develops new flavors, to the marketers who decide which flavors to promote most heavily, to the financial analysts who determine the profitability of each retail location - is very likely a candidate to enter the world of Big Data.
And for those of us in market research, whose livelihoods are immersed an endless cycle of data collection, analysis, transmission, and storage, Big Data has become an inescapable vortex that promises to become more and more integral to the market research process as supplier familiarity increases.