Category: Understanding Marketing
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Explaining Clustering Simply Has Real Value
I was impressed by Annalyn Ng’s and Kenneth Soo’s short book Numsense. I have already discussed it in a prior post, see here. Today I will note how they discuss clustering. This is central to a lot of marketing analyses. Numsense Covers A Lot Of Basic Data Science The subtitle Data Science for the Layman…
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Market Research Lessons
Alex and Mike Sherman have a book of market research lessons. This is a nice little book of sensible ideas. I liked it and will highlight a few of the points that stood out for me. Aims Of The Research Should Impact What You Study This seems obvious, and it is really. Still, it is…
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Ideology, Persuasion, And Going Green
A major challenge is persuading members of the public with very different worldviews to take actions aimed at the common good, such as recycling. An appeal that works for a conservative might not work on a liberal, and vice versa. What then do we know about ideology, persuasion, and going green? People Differ In What…
