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,…
Category: Understanding Marketing
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…
University Pricing
In The Price You Pay For College, Ron Lieber, a journalist with expertise in financial advice, looks at issues around sending a child to college. It is a wide-ranging book full of helpful advice. The advice is mainly for parents confronting the massive financial decision in the US that is their kid’s college attendance. The…
Clear Data-Driven Stories
Scott Galloway has a book on where the US is currently. He provides a useful example of clear data-driven stories. A Famous Marketing Professor Galloway is a marketing professor and as such I am naturally supportive. It is great that he is famous and appears in the media so much. I’m all for it. We…
Random Forests and Machine Learning
Scott Hartshorn has some useful accessible advice on all things analytics. Today I’ll look at his advice on random forests and machine learning. Machine Learning He starts by giving us a clear intuitive, rather than a formal, view of what machine learning (ML) is. He says that at their heart a lot of different ML…
