Recently I was reading Max Weber’s thoughts on “Science as a Vocation” given in a lecture on November 7th, 1917. By science Weber means knowledge creation in the broader sense so pretty much all academics should be included as scientists. It can also tell us about the persistence of academic customs. The Persistence of Academic Customs There…
Category: Understanding Marketing
Why Don’t Businesses Experiment More?
One puzzle for academics, myself included, is why businesses don’t experiment more? Why Don’t Businesses Experiment More? Experiments have great potential to improve business outcomes. Often businesses don’t seem to do much experimenting. Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus…
Teaching CLV Badly
Ex-Ivey PHD student and now University of Calgary professor, Charan Bagga, and I have just published an article. This focused on the teaching of CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). We surveyed the state of case-based teaching materials related to CLV and found them a pretty shoddy bunch. Teaching CLV badly seems to be the default way to teach…
Showing A Problem Does Not Equal Demonstrating A Worsening Problem
Cathy O’Neil has a great book on big data, Weapons of Math Destruction, but one with a fundamental flaw. The flawed claim is made in the book’s subtitle and permeates throughout the book. The subtitle is: “How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy”. I could find no significant evidence of big data increasing inequality in the book. She shows…
The Flat Maximum And Data Science
Steven Finlay has a useful book on Data Science, (Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data). He has lots of helpful practical advice in an easy to access form. He highlights the idea of the flat maximum. The Flat Maximum This is a general recommendation to read the book. I will also highlight a point Finlay makes….
Simpson’s Paradox: Data can be very confusing
One of the strangest things in statistics is Simpson’s paradox. The paradox happens when two sets of data each show the same result. Yet, when you combine the data into a single data set the combined table gives you a different result. Data Can Be Confusing Smith explains this using a click data example. In the data, he shows when you look at…
The Secret Axis: Label Your Axis So As Not To Lie
Gary Smith’s advice on statistics, Standard Deviations, is a really useful and entertaining book. In this Smith points out a number of major problems with the way stats are used. Some problems arise from deliberate tricks played by researchers/managers describing data. Other problems arise through carelessness; the researcher/manager using the data doesn’t realize they are abusing…
The WAITA Model — How To Decide Upon Marketing Metrics
I recently published a short piece for WARC Best Practice on “How to set marketing metrics effectively”. The basic idea behind the piece is an explanation of how to decide upon what marketing metrics to use. This work introduces a new acronym that I’ve produced called the WAITA model. Hopefully, this is easy to remember. Why call…
The Red Queen And Implications For Best Practice
It is hard to spend any time at a business school without hearing the phrase best practice. We teach students best practice. Junior professors seek hints from senior folk on best practice. Even schools regularly go through bouts of benchmarking to see if they are adopting best practice. Best practice essentially is something that gets the most…
The Long-Term Impact Of Advertising
One of marketing’s greatest challenges is that its benefits are often long-term. Spend now, gain later. What is the long-term impact of advertising? Measuring The Long-Term Impact Of Advertising Long-term benefits can be very tough to measure. This is especially true when lots of other activity is happening at the same time. For an analogy…
