Can Small Business in Retailing Afford Digital Media Data Analytics?

Due to the COVID 19 pandemic this year, many offline retailers of all sizes have closed or converted to online retail to survive. Online retailing through digital media have become a major focus of retail businesses today. Consumer data is no longer coming from Point-of-Sales (POS) systems in offline stores but is from data stored in digital media such as website and social media systems. Data-driven marketing decision-making is essential today. However, many small businesses have limited budgets and lack human resources equipped with adequate data skills to effectively utilize the data. Therefore, the researcher recommends utilizing open-source software programs (OSS), which are free to the public, and it was proven that OSS provided valuable insights into customer data, and the marketing strategy based on OSS data analysis successfully improved business performance. In addition, government’s support could further help small business learn data analytics and make data-driven marking decisions, which ultimately would lead to the continuing success and/or survival of small business.

Keywords: Business analytics; Data analytics; Digital media; Key performance indicators; Small business; Open-source software