This week I have a second (and last) post on Agrawal, Gans and Golfarb’s Prediction Machines. This interesting books discusses the difference between machine learning and traditional statistics. The idea being machine learning is more functional, more concerned with a useful result than a precisely accurate one. The challenge is that machine learning predicts not…
Category: Understanding Marketing
How Might AI Change Business?
In the excellent Prediction Machines Agrawal, Gans and Goldfarb take an economics-based view of the changes that will be brought on by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Essentially some basic economic principles can help us see what will change. Given this: How Might AI Change Business? AI Prediction Is Becoming Cheaper The argument is that AI can…
Selling Solutions
The first person who came up with the idea of selling solutions hit on a great idea. Rather than sell their products they would sell what their clients needed. Selling Solutions Can Be A Bit Of A Meaningless Term Unfortunately, it may now be a cliche. Selling solutions is a bit too generic. What was…
The Accountability Of Accountable Marketing
Michiel van de Watering has a book on the accountability of accountable marketing. In this, he analyses some of the pitfalls of current marketing planning. He also outlines some potential for improvement. The State Of Accountability In Marketing It gets right into the action with the foreword (by Guy Powell) asking an extremely pertinent question….
What Do Marketing Researchers Research?
It is an important question, at least for academics. What Do Marketing Researchers Research? Doctor Know Thyself Academics love studying themselves. To this end, Cho, Fu, and Wu have dissected what academic marketing researchers have been up to for the past twenty years (1995-2014). They wrote up their results in a recent paper in the…
Business School Academia And The Craft Guild
Business schools are strange places to work. They are part of universities but it certainly seems like they never totally belong. What then do we know of business school academia and the craft guild? Business School Academia And The Craft Guild Other academics (indeed a fair number of business academics), rightly or wrongly, may see…
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…
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…
