One of the major trends in marketing research over the past few years is the use of "Big Data". This is data, collected at individual customer level across a variety of platforms (potentially both online and offline), which gets merged into a "big dataset" and creates a quite detailed picture of customer behavior.

Have a look at the following NY Times article ("Facebook is Using You"), which gives a very nice overview of how "big data" is used by marketers.

Let's focus on the following issues: opportunities and ethics.

In your opinion, what are some opportunities (on the company's side) from using this type of data?

Can you think of some potential uses of "big data" for a company? (you might want to think of opportunities for segmentation, targeting, uncovering unmet needs in the market, forecasting, etc.)

One issue that's clear even in the article is that there might be ethical concerns when using this type of data.

In your opinion, what are some of these ethical concerns - and what could be done about it?