George Akerlof and Robert Shiller have good points, excellent stories, and a clear aim in Phishing for Phools. The aim is to convince economist colleagues that all market outcomes aren’t perfect. I applaud their aim. That said, their conceptualization assumes consumers (and others) are robots with a monkey on our backs. The monkey prevents us from being “fully rational”. I’d say, however, that we…
How Do We Determine Author Order?
Academics enjoy splitting into obscure little groups. What is more they rarely agree about what is interesting. Perhaps the only thing we can agree on is that academics, and the problems facing academics, are fascinating. A major problem for academics is determining author order on joint works. Academic Teams Most academic articles are created by teams. Given that, in marketing…
A Couple Of Word Clouds To Better Understand Marketing
I thought it’d be helpful to share a couple of word clouds to better understand marketing. Word clouds are sometimes looked down upon by academics but they can be very simple visual ways to summarize text. Are they deep analysis, no, but they are a fun place to start. Word Clouds To Better Understand Marketing:…
Word Clouds And Marketing Thought
Word clouds are a useful way of condensing large amounts of text. Obviously, they don’t perfectly describe complex ideas but they can highlight what a text is about in an easy-to-digest manner. Word clouds typically let the number of times a word is used dictate its size in the cloud. Interesting colors and exotic placement of the words allow for…
Why Gift Cards Are Interesting
In a special holiday edition I focus on why Gift cards are interesting. They are central to many retailers’ strategies and yet economic theory often seems premised on the idea that they shouldn’t exist. Why Give Gift Cards? The argument against them is that a gift card is a bit like cash, just worse. Closed loop cards, those…
Marketing Journal Co-authorship
What do we know about marketing journal co-authorship? Marketing Journal Co-authorship Why do people co-author? This question surely occurs to every academic. Who hasn’t waited for a particularly tardy co-author to return a paper that you really must submit now. It is natural to think, ‘why’. Or maybe ‘WHY‘. It is useful that scholars have investigated the reasons…
Is The Leadership Industry Just Nonsense?
I’m pretty cynical about “Leadership”. A such, I enjoyed Jeffrey Pfeffer’s attack on the Leadership industry. He suggests that the leadership industry is built on un-researched platitudes. What is more every retired leader who writes a book doesn’t necessarily tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So is the leadership industry just nonsense? Testing…
What Metrics Do Managers Use?
Mintz and Currim examined what metrics do managers use? What drives metric use? And how does this tracks to performance? These are fascinating questions. The paper has two aims I’d say. Firstly, academics will be interested in the model that the authors use to try and tease out the “why” behind the metrics. Secondly, managers might…
What Are Marketing Doctoral Programs Like?
A key question for marketing academics concerns the nature of doctoral programs. As such I highly value academic service papers like Elbeck and Vander Schee (2013). They undertook an in-depth look at what is happening in marketing PhD programs. So what are marketing doctoral programs like? Consumer Behavior Is On Top Firstly, they confirmed the dominance of consumer…
Improving Forecasting
Philip Tetlock’s book on expert political judgment was a classic. That said, he clearly thinks that the message taken from that book was too strong. Previously he suggested that experts just aren’t that good at forecasting. He still retains that theme in his new work — but now he is more interested in improving forecasting. Improving Forecasting…
