Sample Admission Essay On Customer Analytics – Application Essay

The big data analysis question that motivates me to apply for the MS in Business Analytics at Marshall, which relates to customer analytics is: “What is the average time taken between a buyer learning or searching of a particular product or service and doing the actual purchase?”
Individuals who search through click ads on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo take a long time to become buyers. For instance, a customer analytics study reported that one million clicks to search ads on the popular search engines resulted in hardly 4 percent searchers becoming a buyer of the product. Also, it took up to four weeks from the time the customer searched the websites to the actual purchase.
The above issue is of paramount importance to marketers. Nowadays, with ecommerce taking the world by storm all over the globe, a business organization can most conveniently introduce its products through its catchy website. Also, ecommerce is virtually taking the shops through customized web pages to the living rooms of customers. Besides, thanks to the networking strategies practiced by marketers, the locality of the shop from the customer’s place has practically become insignificant. This makes the problem all the more interesting to me.
The issue of reducing the interval between product search and buying receives prominence in the light of ecommerce giving hope to retailers who went through various challenges of late. This also would significantly increase the revenues as the uncertain economy resulted in many retailers closing down their business. The popularity of the internet gives much hope to retailers for switching over to ecommerce.
Analysis of huge quantum of customer data would enable me to design suitable software programs that provide creative personalized recommendations to online buyers that include review of earlier users and alternate product suggestions. Analyzing the decision making behavior of customers based on various demographic factors like age, sex, marital status, income and ethnicity would give clues to find creative solutions to narrow down the interval between product search and buying. For instance, follow up through phone calls, revealing the demographic details of customers with positive reviews on the website or incorporating appropriate celebrity endorsements could help minimize the interval.
Even as promoting marketing through the web platform is convenient and saves considerable time and energy of buyers, sometimes customers may regret their choice because of the significant difference between actual product and how it appeared in the web display. Also, reducing the time denies customers the opportunity of taking a stress-free decision.