Paul Magill, Christine Moorman and Nikita Avdiushko raise a major problem in marketing. As they say: ‘When we asked over 300 marketing leaders in the U.S. to identify the activities they find most challenging, the number one thing they reported, by a wide margin, was “demonstrating the impact of marketing actions on financial outcomes.”’ (Magill,…
Academic Life in the 18th Century
As a bit of variety today I will make some notes on academic life but look back to the 18th century. The source is a book on the friendship between two of the great figures of the enlightenment, David Hume and Adam Smith. Dennis Rasmussen outlines their friendship. It is clearly remarkable that such great…
Catch 22 and accounting for employees
A theme of mine is the challenge that marketers have with financial accounting. Essentially most marketing spending is accounted for as an expense, even if it has the explicit intention to be an investment. This makes financial reports pretty poor for understanding the marketing of a firm. Ethan Rouen comes from a different perspective but…
Entertainment Science
Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and Mark Houston published a comprehensive review of research in the entertainment industries. This book gives more attention to movies than music, games and books, mainly for reasons to do with available research, but it is still a fascinating look into all these industries. The recurring theme of the book is a powerful…
The Marketing-Accounting Interface
There is a lot of work linking marketing and finance. Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, nearly all of this has focused on linking markets to financial markets. Such work is useful but I would like more looking at the linkages between marketing and accounting. Sidhu and Robert’s article is an exception. They look at…
Omni-Channel Distribution
Marketing seems like it is only getting harder. More ways to communicate and sell to the customer — driven by new technology — means more opportunities but also more challenges. This has led to a concern about showrooming. This is where a channel is used primarily to show off the products but not to make…
Confusion In Attribution
Attribution is one of the most important topics in marketing. How does one give credit for a sale to the medium that caused it? Did the TV ad generate the sales, or the online advert, or even a sales clerk in a physical store? Last touch attribution — the final touchpoint gets full credit —…
Marketing and (Very Old) New Technology
Technology changes constantly. In recent centuries, at least, people have become used to marvels appearing that they couldn’t imagine when they were growing up. This means that people have to get used to new technology; how do they react? I read an interesting paper on reactions to early movies (1890s/1900s). Specifically the author was looking…
Predicting What Image Works For An Individual
One of the central challenges of marketing is that people differ. Marketers would love to create marketing communications that work for everyone — and some communications do pretty well — but nothing has universal appeal. Some images work fantastically for some people but turn others off. How can we predict who will like what? Sandra…
The growth rate of modern science
How has modern science progressed? This is a tough question to answer for the last few generations. It is even harder if you have aspirations to go back a lot further. Lutz Bornmann and Rudiger Mutz certainly don’t lack for ambition. They look at the growth of science since the 17th Century. There is a…