Brand building advertising invests money into creating goodwill with a customer. Without further spending such goodwill declines. There are other ways to create goodwill. For example, US universities do so through the funding of sports. Such funding has its payoff through things like the Flutie effect. The Flutie Effect Doug Chung looked at the impact…
Category: Management Theory
The Balanced Scorecard
Today’s post is about a classic of business literature. The Balanced Scorecard from Robert Kaplan and David Norton is an approach to business strategy. It is hard to argue with the basic idea that businesses should regularly monitor a variety of success factors and report how they are succeeding on each factor. Four Perspectives In…
Emulating Alexander The Great
It is popular to gain “advice” from historical characters about management. The logic seems to be that the higher the body count of the historical character the more wisdom they have to impart. There are various approaches, Robert’s take on Attila the Hun goes for humor. Leandro Martino’s book on Alexander the Great takes a…
Attila’s Leadership Secrets
Wess Roberts’ Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun was a great idea. Too many management writers seem to think boring is the way to go. A good message wrapped in an interesting package is likely to have more impact than the same message conveyed in turgid prose and indecipherable acronyms. As such, I’ll confess to…
Thinking By The Numbers; Mostly Smart And Occasionally New
I enjoyed the book Super Crunchers. It is a couple of years old [in 2014] but it still reads well. Perhaps some of the surprise people might have had when it was published may have dissipated. In recent years things only the rare few knew about, e.g. metadata and data warehouses, have become staples of dinnertime conversation. It…
Fairness and Channel Coordination
Fairness matters in life. People are motivated to achieve fair outcomes. (Although people are generally quicker to notice shares that are unfair to them than to other people.) Given business is a human social endeavor it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that fairness matters in business too. Adding fairness concerns to models of how business works…
Too Much Information
Peter Shawn Taylor’s article in the July issue [2014] of Canadian Business tackled an interesting issue. Can we give consumers too much information? The Problem Of Too Much Information In Disclosures Consumers need adequate information to reward marketers offering a good a deal. As such, information is generally a good thing. That said, long legal disclaimers…
Basking In Reflected Glory
My final World Cup-related post illustrates a psychological phenomenon. People like to proclaim their allegiance to groups. They are basking in reflected glory. Who Are Your Team? Interestingly, the groups we choose to associate with change depending upon how the groups perform. This is because people associate with achievements that are not their own but that…
Six Decision-Making Lessons From The World Cup
Departing from my usual structure of analyzing a single topic I thought I’d illustrate decision making lessons with examples from the World Cup. (This post on the 6 decision-making lessons from the world cup was written in 2014). Three Decision-Making Lessons From The World Cup Firstly, regression to the mean is commonly not recognized. Spain had a very…
Penalty Kicks and Mixed Strategy
As we move into the knockout stages of the World Cup [written in 2014] the specter of penalty kicks raises its ugly head. Penalty kicks are awarded as punishments during the game. They are also used to break ties at the end of the game. Penalty kicks are especially interesting for researchers. They represent an excellent chance…
