Sustainability requires changes on several fronts. In business changes to supply chains are an obvious area to address. Marketing is another discipline with a key role in creating a more sustainable future. This is not least because it can help persuade towards both sustainable and unsustainable behavior. So how might we go about changing marketing…
Category: Understanding Marketing
Machine Learning Deployment
Eric Siegel has a book devoted to getting the best out of AI; specifically its prediction-related branch, machine learning. He gives lots of practical advice on machine learning development. How then to get the best out of your algorithms? Practical Advice On Machine Learning Deployment Siegel gives a way of thinking about machine learning development….
Managing Across Business Disciplines
One of the big challenges of running an organization is managing across business disciplines. That is one of the many insights shared in Stephen Diorio and Chris Hummel’s book Revenue Operations. Managing Across Business Disciplines The book I wrote with Shane (Xin) Wang — The Customer Asset — looked at the problem of customer valuation….
Distribution Of Preferences Matters
In marketing, we often refer to averages. Indeed, the average does matter. “What does the average person think?”, is often a reasonable enough question to start. Plus, higher average preference is usually better than lower. Unfortunately, this can risk obscuring the fact that the distribution of preferences also matters. Polarizing Brands Xueming Luo, Michael Wiles,…
Recommendations Are Complex
Christina Stahlkopf looked at the Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a short 2019 Harvard Business Review article. The upshot of the work was that recommendations are complex. We want consumers to be simple but they consistently (and inconsiderately) do things to mess up the metrics that describe them. NPS As A Compass Stahlkopf takes a…
The Benefits Of Simple
There are many papers on the mechanics of NPS (the Net Promoter Score) across various disciplines. In many ways they are easy to write. Fred Reichheld’s original claim was a bold one. Namely, that NPS was the one number you needed to know to grow. It was clearly a sales claim. It was pretty absurd…
Empirical Laws
Byron Sharp is a pugnacious writer. He outlines what he describes as the empirical laws of marketing. This allows him to talk about those who give bad advice. Basically, this is anyone who gives a recommendation that does not follow the empirical laws he describes. I appreciate the forthrightness. Too many academics aren’t willing to…
NPS And Casino Patrons
I really appreciate when academic papers seek to address issues that matter to non-academics. Sanghee Kim and Tom Gruca looked at the use of Net Promoter Score (NPS) to predict customer retention and spending a topic important to many business people. What do they find about NPS and casino patrons? Casinos And Net Promoter A…
Sustainable Marketing And Commerciality
My regular collaborator, Jonathan Knowles, has a new piece in the Journal of Sustainable Marketing. He tackles the idea of sustainable marketing and the role of marketers in the world of for-profit companies. What then does he have to say about sustainable marketing and commercialism? For-Profit Organizations And Social Progress Knowles starts by arguing that…
The Path To 2050
How can the world get to carbon neutral by 2050? This is the date the Paris Agreement specified for getting away from the activities that produce greenhouse gasses (see here). Many would argue that that the Paris agreement was not ambitious enough. Still, we don’t currently have a clear plan to reach carbon neutral by…
