Internet of Behavior: Understanding the Next Digital Frontier

Companies around the world do everything in their power to learn about their customers, their purchasing preferences, future purchasing patterns and trends.

With this information, they can efficiently optimize their business strategies and set their companies up for unprecedented success. The Internet of Behavior (IoB) helps them achieve precisely that: the ability to understand human behavior and behavioral patterns to make a profit.

Has the Internet of Behavior become so important that it is expected to grow 23.6 percent from 2023 to 2030? The technology is currently valued at US$369.25 billion.

First described by Professor Göte Nyman of the University of Helsinki in 2012, the Internet of Behavior is an application of IoT extended to make the most of behavioral science and data analytics. Therefore, it is crucial that we familiarize ourselves with the impact of IoB technology on all types of industries.

What is the Internet of Behavior?

The Internet of Behavior is a system built on the Internet, sensors and processors. It was developed to process data collected through nodal devices to influence human behavior.

IoB can also be defined as a concept that works cohesively when data analysis, behavioral analysis, technology and human psychology work together.

It can even be argued that IoB is a natural extension of IoT because it collects data that can be processed, analyzed and ultimately applied to help people make informed business decisions. In other words, performance-based IoT applications are often IoB-enabled.

Components of the Internet of Behavior

• Data collection: An IoB system works on data. To collect behavioral data, the system needs access to nodal devices or networks such as IoT devices, social media networks, location tracking services, biometric devices, and more. Some of the data collected are:
  • Metadata
  • Purchasing and spending habits
  • Biometric data
  • Sales and customer support interactions
  • Social media interactions
  • Location and location-specific actions
  • Internet of Things Data
• Data analysis: Once data is collected, it passes through advanced analytical programs and data interpretation models driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Data is processed and analyzed to provide insights into human behavior.
• Behavioral Intervention: Companies can understand changes in customer behavior patterns and decipher the reasoning behind customer decisions. Furthermore, analytics can be used to develop in-depth user profiles and better customer experience strategies and achieve greater profits.

Applications of the Internet of Behavior

To help you better understand the real-world applications of Internet of Behavior systems, we've rounded up some of the latest and most notable implementations of the technology.

Marketing and customer behavior analysis

• Personalized Marketing: Modern businesses rely on personalization to develop better marketing strategies. With IoB, companies can track changes in customer behavior patterns and use consumer data related to their purchasing habits, likes and dislikes to create personalized marketing campaigns, products, services and content.
• Predictive Analytics: With IoB, companies can stay ahead of future trends and improve product and marketing strategies as it enables predictive analytics. IoB-based predictive analytics can help companies increase efficiency and productivity by automating routine tasks and identifying not-so-apparent patterns in customer behavior.

For example, ecommerce companies like Amazon use predictive analytics by collecting information like purchase history, browsing history, average sessions, and more to recommend the right products at the right time.

• Customer loyalty: IoB models can strategically track customer satisfaction and allow companies to identify changes in satisfaction levels. By helping with predictive analytics, companies can use IoB to identify CX-related issues early and reduce the turnover rate.

Health and lifestyle management

• Patient Monitoring: IoB has revolutionized healthcare by successfully implementing the concept of remote patient monitoring. Now, healthcare providers can closely monitor a patient's recovery through smart devices that track key health parameters. Not only that, but they can also collect information related to medication adherence, lifestyle choices and other factors that contribute to a person's health.
• Preventative care: Prevention is better than the cure. Thanks to IoB, people and healthcare providers can easily access data collected through smart devices, such as the Apple Watch, to monitor certain health-related vulnerabilities or risks and suggest preventative measures.
• Mental health: IoB systems can be programmed to track a patient's sleep patterns, physical activities, stress levels, and recurring mental health patterns in order to provide personalized mental health interventions. With IoB, therapists can now rely on data to craft successful, personalized treatment plans based on changing needs.

Smart Cities and Urban Development

• Traffic management: With an array of sensors sensitive to heat, humidity, and motion installed in key locations, the traffic department can monitor data related to weather and traffic congestion. It can use real-time data feeds to create detours and regulate traffic light intensity for effective traffic light management.
• Waste management: IoB enables smart waste management through ultrasonic, proximity-based, weight-sensing RFID sensors installed in bins that can help waste management teams assess levels and determine whether truck drivers (equipped with RFID and GPS readers) may or may not stop to collect waste. This allows for optimized, real-time rerouting of trucks, which can help reduce operational inefficiencies in waste collection.
• Public Security: IoB gives authorities an advantage over criminals because sensors and surveillance cameras (IoT devices) installed in public places can collect data to provide them with real-time monitoring. The IoB system can be integrated with alarm systems to improve authorities' ability to identify potential threats and respond to emergencies.

Industrial Applications and Manufacturing

• Workplace Safety: Many industries, especially manufacturing, benefit from IoB applications because the technology helps maintain workplace safety by consistently monitoring machine activity and employee behavior. This helps them identify unsafe practices and notify workers of potential accidents. By following standards, teams can take timely action and inform workplace safety training.
• Quality Control: Quality checks can be improved with the help of sensors that track the factors that lead to poor products being manufactured. Companies can rely on IoB and monitor QC failure patterns over a period of time, enabling them to take necessary action to improve business operations. Additionally, they can track employee performance to identify areas that need improvement.
• Supply chain management: Companies can significantly reduce operational costs and the overall cost of manufacturing a product by using IoB to optimize supply chain management. Every supplier and transporter in the supply chain can be tracked and their performance and behavior tracked, to introduce more efficiency into the process.

Education

• Personalized learning: Online learning has opened doors to personalized learning as education technology companies push to use the IoB to learn about student and teacher behavior. Companies collect and analyze data to create a more personalized learning platform. Not only that, but analytics can help personalize educational content accordingly.
• Student Engagement: Schools and educational technology companies can track changes in student attention levels using IoB tools. This can be done by installing facial recognition sensors inside physical classrooms or collecting data through front-facing cameras on laptops, tablets and smartphones. These applications can help educational institutions develop adaptive teaching methods to increase student engagement.
• Attendance and performance monitoring: Student attendance is closely linked to their performance at school. An IoB system that collects biometric data can help track student attendance patterns in educational institutions. The pattern can be compared with students' performance over a period, which can help institutions identify at-risk students and provide additional support.

Benefits of the Internet of Behaviors

Now that we are well acquainted with IoB, let's see how the technology benefits public and private organizations.

#1: Better decision making in companies

• Data-driven strategies : Modern businesses run on information, which requires leveraging an enormous amount of data across all business operations. With IoB, companies can analyze their operations to develop reliable data-driven strategies. IoB enables them to gain sharper insights, leading to highly informed decision-making.
• Predictive Capabilities : Changing customer behavior is a reliable clue for companies to change their strategies, especially in marketing. IoB predictive analytics helps companies track customer behavior patterns and gain insights, enabling them to adapt their strategies proactively and gain a competitive advantage.

#2: Personalized Public Services

The IoB has the potential to redefine public service delivery, enabling governments to design services tailored to the needs and preferences of their citizens.

• Healthcare Personalization : Government and private healthcare stations can be interconnected to form a reservoir containing all the data for an IoB system that helps fuel more effective public health campaigns based on the changing needs of a community. Personalized healthcare is an opportunity for the government to invest its medical resources intelligently and effectively.
• Public Transportation Optimization : Motion-detecting, heat-seeking, and humidity-tracking sensors placed strategically throughout a city can help clarify commuting patterns. The data collected can be processed through an IoB system to help regulate traffic lights in a way that creates optimal detours and a smoother traffic experience.

#3: Policymaking Influence on Governments

• Data-driven policies : Policymaking has a huge impact if it is not supported by adequate data. The Internet of Behavior allows governments to double down on behavioral insights when crafting public welfare policies. This data-driven approach to policymaking helps governments meet citizens’ real needs and preferences.
• Responsive Governance : Real-time behavioral data can help governments identify immediate concerns and adjust policies accordingly. For example, if IoB data suggests an increase in online gambling behaviors, governments may consider reviewing gambling regulations or launching awareness campaigns.

#4 Community Planning and Development

• Urban planning : Urban planners can use IoB data to understand how residents move, where they gather, and their daily routines. These insights can help shape the development of parks, recreational areas and public spaces.
• Resource allocation : Understanding community behaviors can help local authorities determine where resources are most needed. Whether it's a new school in an area with young families or more green space in active communities, the IoB can guide these decisions.

#5 Environmental Benefits

• Insights into sustainable living : By monitoring consumption patterns – whether water, electricity or gas – local governments can create awareness campaigns that promote sustainable practices tailored to specific community behaviors.
• Waste reduction : IoB can provide information on household waste patterns, leading to more effective recycling campaigns or waste reduction initiatives.

#6: Crime Prevention and Public Safety

• Predictive Policing : Law enforcement can use IoB data to predict where crime may occur based on historical data and real-time insights.
• Emergency Response : Analyzing behavioral patterns during emergencies can help streamline evacuation processes and improve the overall emergency response mechanism.

#7 Cultural and Recreational Advancements

• Cultural Engagement : Local governments can understand residents' cultural and recreational preferences, leading to more personalized events, festivals, and community activities.
• Boosting Tourism : By understanding visitor behaviors and preferences, tourism departments can offer personalized experiences, boosting local tourism.

Challenges and concerns

IoB applications present their own set of risks and challenges. Here are the hurdles that IoB-driven systems need to overcome.

Privacy and security

• Privacy Invasion: Privacy is a major challenge when implementing IoB-driven strategies. Installing data collection units such as sensors, cameras and biometric devices or extracting data from social media can be perceived as an invasion of privacy.
• Data security: IoB can access sensitive data (delivery routes, bank codes and other sensitive information), which poses a huge security risk. Data breaches and security breaches can immediately put institutions that collect data into legal difficulties.

Ethical considerations

• Behavior Manipulation: Customers value authentic digital marketing and hate being manipulated. With IoB applications focused on tracking users' online activities to optimize search experience optimization and predict user behavior, there is a risk of distorting the essence of genuine search experience optimization.

It is critical to establish distinct boundaries for organizations using IoB applications to ensure they do not manipulate their audiences into making specific purchasing decisions.

• Consent and Transparency: Because IoB technologies aim to leverage usage data and improve optimization of the search experience, companies need to explicitly inform the individuals they want to track. Providing a list of parameters and attributes to track and collecting data only after obtaining clear consent is essential.

Furthermore, organizations must be fully transparent about how they will use the data collected in their digital marketing strategies and other applications.

Regulatory compliance

• Complex Regulations: All technologies, especially those that involve granular tracking of users' online activities, must adhere to strict data privacy regulations. These regulations differ globally, forcing companies to align their IoB systems and devices to ensure full compliance and shape their operations according to regional guidelines.
• Application Difficulties: IoT devices, essential for improving the online search experience, consistently gather multiple types of data. This prolific data collection can challenge data privacy regulators in overseeing the data acquisition process and its subsequent applications. Companies, and potentially even cybercriminals, can exploit these application gaps to capture highly sensitive usage data.

Future of the Internet of Behavior

Gartner recently predicted that more than 50 percent of the world's population will be subject to Internet of Behavior programs by the end of 2025. As IoB leverages data collection and analysis, data analytics companies are creating more IoB platforms. secure and privacy compliant.

The advancement of this technology in social media will also provide a major boost to IoB applications, enabling the tracking and analysis of social media trends and making predictive analytics more viable.

Additionally, improvements in artificial intelligence and machine learning will help companies use IoB to perform on-chain behavioral analysis. For example, some banking companies use tokens, NFTs and smart contracts through blockchains to predict user behavior – increasing their efforts and leading to better results.

If you liked this, be sure to check out our other IoT articles.

• How the Internet of Things is revolutionizing healthcare
• How IoT, AI and Blockchain Lead the Way to a Smarter Energy Sector
• Internet of Things and Edge Computing: What's the difference?
• 6 Ways IoT Technology Can Improve Your Manufacturing Operation
• IoT: 5 predictions