UCL Press

Consumer Data Research

Edited by Paul A. Longley, Alex Singleton, and James Cheshire

£17.99

ISBN: 9781787353893

Publication: May 02, 2018

Paperback £17.99 Open Access PDF £0.00

Big Data collected by customer-facing organisations – such as smartphone logs, store loyalty card transactions, smart travel tickets, social media posts, or smart energy meter readings – account for most of the data collected about citizens today. As a result, they are transforming the practice of social science. Consumer Big Data are distinct from conventional social science data not only in their volume, variety and velocity, but also in terms of their provenance and fitness for ever more research purposes. The contributors to this book, all from the Consumer Data Research Centre, provide a first consolidated statement of the enormous potential of consumer data research in the academic, commercial and government sectors – and a timely appraisal of the ways in which consumer data challenge scientific orthodoxies.

Praise for Consumer Data Research

'An insightful, state-of-the-art guide into the social and commercial value of applying geographical thinking to the study of consumer data.'
Professor Richard Harris, University of Bristol

'An excellent guide to leveraging the value of academic research on valid data. Partnerships based around consumer data should be encouraged and supported by all and their outputs used to better the way we manage the world we live in.'
Bill Grimsey, retailer and author of The Vanishing Highstreet

'The use of data from everyday consumer transactions is a potential game-changer for understanding economic and social patterns and trends. This is an excellent overview of the field.'
Dr. Tom Smith, Managing Director, Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus

Paul Longley is Professor of Geographic Information Science at UCL where he also directs the ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre. His research interests are focused around socioeconomic applications of GIScience, in geo-temporal demographics, retailing, genealogy and urban modelling, latterly often using Big Data analytics.

James Cheshire is a Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Human Geography at UCL and Deputy Director of the ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre. His research focuses on the analysis and visualisation of new forms of geographically referenced population data for social science.

Alex Singleton is Professor of Geographic Information Science at the University of Liverpool and Deputy Director of the ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre. His research explores how the complexities of individual behaviours manifest spatially and the ways in which they can be represented and understood though a framework of geographic data science.

INTRODUCTION
Consumer Data Research – An Overview
Paul Longley, James Cheshire and Alex Singleton

PART ONE PROVENANCE AND CONSUMER DATA INFRASTRUCTURE
1. Consumer Registers as Spatial Data Infrastructure and their Use in Migration and Residential Mobility Research
Guy Lansley and Wen Li
2. The Provenance of Customer Loyalty Card Data
Alyson Lloyd, James Cheshire and Martin Squires
3. Retail Areas and their Catchments
Michalis Pavlis and Alex Singleton
4. Given and Family Names as Global Spatial Data Infrastructure
Oliver O’Brien and Paul Longley

PART TWO DYNAMICS AND CONSUMER DATA INFRASTRUCTURES
5. Ethnicity and Residential Segregation
Tian Lan, Jens Kandt and Paul Longley
6. Movements in Cities: Footfall and its Spatio-Temporal Distribution
Roberto Murcio, Balamurugan Soundararaj and Karlo Lugomer
7. The Geography of Online Retail Behaviour
Alexandros Alexiou, Dean Riddlesden and Alex Singleton
8. Smart Card Data and Human Mobility
Nilufer Sari Aslam and Tao Cheng
9. Interpreting Smart Meter Data of UK Domestic Energy Consumers
Anastasia Ushakova and Roberto Murcio

PART THREE NEW APPLICATIONS AND DATA LINKAGE
10. Geovisualisation of Consumer Data
Oliver O’Brien and James Cheshire
11. Geotemporal Twitter Demographics
Alistair Leak and Guy Lansley
12. Developing Indicators for Measuring Health-Related Features of Neighbourhoods
Konstantinos Daras, Alec Davies, Mark A Green and Alex Singleton
13. Consumers in their Built Environment Context
Alexandros Alexiou and Alex Singleton

EPILOGUE
Researching Consumer Data
Paul Longley, James Cheshire and Alex Singleton

'The use of data from everyday consumer transactions is a potential game-changer for understanding economic and social patterns and trends. This is an excellent overview of the field.'
Dr. Tom Smith, Managing Director, Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus

'An excellent guide to leveraging the value of academic research on valid data. Partnerships based around consumer data should be encouraged and supported by all and their outputs used to better the way we manage the world we live in.'
Bill Grimsey, retailer and author of The Vanishing Highstreet

'An insightful, state-of-the-art guide into the social and commercial value of applying geographical thinking to the study of consumer data.'
Professor Richard Harris, University of Bristol

Format: Paperback

Size: 230 × 190 mm

196 Pages

ISBN: 9781787353893

Publication: May 02, 2018