Arvind Sathi’s book Engaging Customers Using Big Data has a number of interesting points about big data. What does he tell us about marketing in the world of big data?
Marketing In The World Of Big Data
Sathi is keen to point out that marketers now drive many technological needs in firms.
The chief marketing officer (CMO) has now earned his/her right to be the next big customer or boss for the CIO, as enormous IT investments get diverted from other business groups to the CMO organization.
Sathi, 2014, page 161
Despite the focus on big data I liked the fact that Sathi notes important general marketing points.
The buying and selling of big-ticket items is a tricky business. The pricing is more variable because of supply-demand imbalances and the lack of a perfect market.
Sathi, 2014, page 97
The good news is that when buying a house you might get a great bargain. The bad news is that you can’t rely on any quoted price to be anywhere near the ballpark of reasonable. When you buy a house don’t rely on the pithy notion that there is no such thing as a free lunch. There are lots of free lunches, although you might be the one paying for other people’s lunches.
Reading Managerial Books
As an academic, I often relish the chance to read managerial books. They are generally much more fun than academic papers. I criticize academics for the way they write but occasionally I see the benefits of academic writing. Sathi lays out three propositions. They are generally reasonable — e.g., marketing is moving from using samples to observing populations. Still, I would have liked the writing to be more focused on the propositions. The writing wanders around with lots of interesting details but I found myself getting a bit lost on how it all fit together.
My favorite bit wasn’t really about business it was Sathi complaining.
… “Angry Bird”[sic] and other games were productivity killers among executives.
Sathi, 2014, page 98
Kids, or more precisely IBM executives, today.
For more on big data see here, here, and here.
Read: Arvind Sathi (2014) Engaging Customers Using Big Data: How Marketing Analytics are Transforming Business, Palgrave Macmillan