3. Contemporary sources of marketin

3. Contemporary sources of marketing data and metrics
This paper categorizes contemporary sources of marketing data into three groups:
traditional, digital, and neurophysiological (Figure 1). The sources of marketing data
are ordered by the volume of data (sample size) in Figure 1. Digital data is considered
to have the highest volume since the largest number of individual interactions can be
tracked on the internet. In comparison, neurophysiological data has the lowest volume
since sample sizes are limited due to expensive data collection technologies. However,
the order based on volume of data can change in the future due to the development of
tools tracking different types of data.
3.1 Traditional data
Traditional sources of customer data including surveys, focus groups, experiments,
interviews, observations, and transactions (scanner data), have existed for aconsiderable time in marketing research and practice, prior to the age of internet
marketing. Many of the traditional data sources now overlap with digital data since
they can be sourced over the internet as well. For example, observational data collection
takes place when consumer behavior is recorded through direct and contrived
observation, physical trace measures, and behavior recordings devices (Aaker et al.,
2012). Such observation of consumer behavior can take place in a physical setting such
as store, or an online setting such as online brand community, thus bridging both
categories of data. A detailed discussion of the traditional sources of marketing data
is covered in previous literature and is beyond the scope of this paper (refer Aaker et al.,
2012 for an overview of traditional data sources). The following sections focus on
the integration of newer sources of data including digital and neurophysiological
sources. The metrics and measures that apply to the three data sources are delineated in
Table I.