Adam Alter’s Drunk Tank Pink is a fun book. It follows in a long tradition of behavioral books — some by psychologists, some by marketers — that describe interesting quirks found in academic research. Much of Alter’s focus is on the subtle influence of color on us. Unfortunately some of the influences seem too subtle…
Category: Understanding Marketing
Meta-Analysis: Combining Many Results into One
How marketing impacts firm value is an important question facing for-profit businesses. In an ambitious paper Conchar, Crask and Zinkhan (2005) examined this. they did a meta-analysis: combining many results into one. Meta-Analysis Seem Like Hard Work The hard work involved in this paper is impressive. The authors looked at 88 studies of advertising and…
A Marketing Man’s Thoughts On Ads And Information
Following on from last week’s blog I wanted to note a few other great features of Matthew Willcox’s The Business of Choice. Let’s hear this A Marketing Man’s Thoughts On Ads And information. Too Much Information On a theoretical side, he discusses the problem of too much information. I found his take appealing. He notes…
Learning From A Case Study Of Harvard Business School
I see much value in opinionated books, they are great at starting conversations. Bearing that in mind I will say that I enjoyed Duff McDonald’s The Golden Passport. He describes the history of Harvard Business School (HBS) and he isn’t afraid to give his thoughts. What then can we learn from a case study of…
The Danger of Data Mining
Is data analysis leading to bigotry? It is a sensitive subject. Data enthusiasts (and I’d probably be in this camp) hope analysis can get rid of silly ideas. After all when we get better information we will be able to combat old prejudices. I am genuinely optimistic. Still there is a major problem where your…
Eras of Marketing
My first degree was in history and I am always interested in how people classify history. Time is continuous, it just keeps on coming. Yet, human beings often find it hard to make sense when something is continuous. It is much easier to operate with items grouped in some ways. We like to see things…
Optimal Distinctiveness And Social Influence
Jonah Berger’s Invisible Influence is in the tradition of informative marketing books based upon behavioral research, think Dan Ariely, Sheena Iyengar, or Chip Heath. He concentrates on optimal distinctiveness and social influence. Some of the details people may know from elsewhere but all of which are interesting. Optimal Distinctiveness And Social Influence One of the…
Buying And Selling Attention
Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants is an interesting book about buying and selling attention. History Of The Market For Attention I must confess I enjoyed the first half more than the end. The end of the book is a pretty conventional view of where we are now. I don’t think anyone will be surprised to…
The Failure Of Markets
I very much enjoyed John Cassidy’s How Markets Fail. It is an ambitious piece in which he tries to describe how economic thought has impacted real-world markets. He has a special focus on the collapse of the financial markets in 2007/8 and the economic thought behind the failure to regulate the markets properly. What does he say about the failure…
Ranking Business Schools’ PhD Programs
I am probably more positive about rankings than most professors. How then can we go about ranking business schools’ PhD programs? Rankings: An Apology For Not Being More Angry It is not that I don’t see the weaknesses of rankings. They have tons of problems. My view on ranking is, however, influenced by the fact that the…
