It is extremely challenging to get marketing metrics pieces published at top marketing journals. Indeed, a piece on finding the right marketing metrics isn’t a typical article. One challenge is that often journals want something “new”. Investigating what managers do doesn’t seem new enough. This is a real shame. I worry editorial decisions encourage the…
Category: Marketing models
Improving Measurement With Big Data
The data being used by managers is becoming increasing messy. Unstructured data lacks the nice organization of traditional data. Of course, the profusion of such unstructured data (text, videos, music) makes analysis complex but also brings considerable opportunities. Big data brings big headaches and big possibilities. We have some advice on improving measurement with big…
Marketing, Cash Flow and Shareholder Wealth
Marketers have traditionally been pretty poor at showing why marketing matters to shareholders. In my experience marketers often just assume that marketing is important. They then just expect everyone else to believe it. Instead we really need to consider marketing, cash flow and shareholder wealth and how these fit together. Marketing Impact On The Firm…
Story Spreadsheets
Business school spreadsheets annoy me. I’m not anti-spreadsheet generally. Indeed, a good spreadsheet is a thing of beauty. What irritates me is the belief students have that a good spreadsheet is a complicated spreadsheet. Students sometimes think that the more they can jam onto a single worksheet the better. This fundamentally mistakes the purpose of…
The Problem Of Overfitting
Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise has much to recommend it. It is about prediction generally, rather than being focused specifically on baseball or politics where he built his reputation. He also notes challenges with statistical models, specifically the problem of overfitting. The Problem Of Overfitting A problem Silver addresses is the overfitting of mathematical…