Use of Big Data phenomenon in lifestyle Retail sector

Trend of the last decade is rise in volume of data which may come either from traditional sources, used for long time, or from new sources, created mainly by new technologies. Commonly used systems for data management and analysis are designed for data with clearly defined structure, saved within relational databases. However, these solutions are no longer capable of managing really huge volumes of data, especially if said data are unstructured and in need of fast processing. Task of this thesis is to acquaint the reader with Big Data phenomenon, to define it and show it's use cases. Detailed definition is accomplished with explanation of data management priciples within Apache Hadoop system. Thesis priority is to locate and to define possible benefits of this phenomenon for lifestyle retail; this is achieved with showing of possible practical applications of this trend within this market's business processes. These goals are achieved in three parts of the thesis -- first is dedicated to theoretical definition of Big Data, including definitions of individual used methods. Second one defines retail market and it's subdiscipline, lifestyle retail. The most important, third analytical part describes individual practical benefits of Big Data for lifestyle retail market and designates metrics to measure those. Benefits of this thesis can be seen in complex description of Big Data phenomenon and it's possibilities and mainly in it's real applications within processes in lifestyle subdiscipline of retail.