Are personas done?: Evaluating the usefulness of personas in the age of online analytics

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

11-2018

Abstract

In this research, we conceptually examine the use of personas in an age of large-scale online analytics data. Based on the criticism and benefits outlined in prior work and by practitioners working with online data, we formulate the major arguments for and against the use of personas given real-time online analytics data about customers, analyze these arguments, and demonstrate areas for the productive employment of data-driven personas by leveraging online analytics data in their creation. Our key tenet is that data-driven personas are located between aggregated and individual customer statistics. At their best, digital data-driven personas capture the coverage of the customer base attributed to aggregated data representations while retaining the interpretability of individual-level analytics; they benefit from powerful computational techniques and novel data sources. We discuss how digital data-driven personas can draw from technological advancements to remedy the notable concerns voiced by scholars and practitioners, including persona validation, inconsistency problem, and long development times. Finally, we outline areas of future research of personas in the context of online analytics. We argue that to survive in the rapidly developing online customer analytics industry, personas must evolve by adopting new practices.

Keywords

data-driven personas, online analytics, customer segmentation

Discipline

Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing

Research Areas

Data Science and Engineering

Publication

Persona Studies

Volume

4

Issue

2

First Page

47

Last Page

65

ISSN

2205-5258

Identifier

10.21153/psj2018vol4no2art737

Publisher

Deakin University

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.21153/psj2018vol4no2art737

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS