How Big Data Boosted Online Sales for GNC, Sur La Table and ModCloth

When it comes to retailing in the digital era, technology is often hyped as the key to knowing the long unknowable, a means to reveal deeper truths about what shoppers want and how they want marketers to deliver it to them. Indeed, the party line on insights to be gained from big data — information gleaned from shoppers’ online and mobile purchasing patterns and activity on social media sites — would, in theory, nullify that iconic quote from department store inventor John Wanamaker: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half."