One of the major debates in marketing is: Do Facts Matter To Persuasion? The good news is that it will never be finished. Sometimes they do, sometimes less so is probably the answer. Still, it generates debate. Understanding People Who Don’t Think Like Us I really wanted to like Scott Adams’ Win Bigly. What was…
Category: Management Theory
Research And Popular Advice
Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind is a curious book. It is highly influenced by academic research (the author is an academic). Yet, I wouldn’t say it was an academic book. It tells us something about research and popular advice and how they mix. Academic Self-Help Levitin’s doesn’t read like the standard academic book: “here —…
Character And Impacting Politics From Retirement
David Brooks’ book The Social Animal was fascinating. We saw a Conservative commentator engaging well with social science. The Road to Character is a rather different book. What then does Brooks tell us about character and impacting politics from retirement? Brooks As Biographer It is a collection of biographies designed to encourage more moral behavior….
Big Data And Understanding Human Behavior
What do we know about big data and understanding human behavior? New Data, New Insights The premise in Everybody Lies seems sound to me. Here we have an entirely new dataset that reveals things about people that they are not willing to reveal. Advice: don’t listen to the audiobook in the car with kids. It…
Do We Always Fall For Cons?
Maria Konnikova goes through an exciting review of a lot of psychological findings in her book — The Confidence Game. At times I wondered, do we always fall for cons? Confidence Helps Konnikova is an engaging writer and her book is well informed by academic research. She has the fascinating story of a con man…
Price Wars
The problem of price wars is a significant one for businesses. The Problem of Price Wars Consumers generally love price wars. It is possible for such conflicts to hurt consumers long-term but in the short-term lower prices share more of the value created by the business. This makes consumers happier. Managers can more easily see…
Valuing Free Customers
Two sided markets are an important concept in economics and business. They have some exciting characteristics and present some great problems in deciding on corporate strategy. One issue is: how much should a company pay to acquire a customer who isn’t paying anything? How to go about valuing free customers? The Value Of Customers Who…
Taste and Categorization
Tom Vanderbilt examines the problem of taste and categorization in his book: “You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice”. He examines the way taste matters in modern life. His focus is mostly on business. He discusses food, music, art, beer…. Vanderbilt details such things as how recommendation agents work to suggest…
Political Marketing And The Modern Age
How have election communciations been changing? What can we say about political marketing and the modern age? The US Presidential Election of 2016 With a couple of colleagues, Joseph Ryoo and Alina Nastasoiu, I wrote a chapter in a recent review of the US Presidential Elections in 2016. (We could have just published a one-word…
Avoiding Decision Traps
How can we go about avoiding decision traps? Decision Traps The book Decisions Traps is a generation old now. Still, it remains a useful book on decision making. Occasionally it veers a bit too far with its claims. For instance, it has “brilliant decision making” in the title. Yet, I can forgive that as it may…
