Skip to content

Marketing Thought

Clarifying management/marketing theory

Menu
  • Neil Bendle
  • Popular Marketing Metrics: How Not To Mess Them Up
  • Marketing Metrics 4th Edition Book
  • Marketing PhD Applications
  • Advice For The Marketing Academic Job Market
  • Sustainable Marketing Strategy
  • Public Policy, Behavioral Economics and Marketing
Menu

Predictive Analytics And Vast Search

Posted on May 20, 2016December 13, 2021 by neilbendle

Eric Siegel has an excellent book on predictive analytics and vast search. As his title suggests these involve lying, buying and dying as well as a few things that don’t rhyme.

Applying Analytics

The center of his book is a table of applications of predictive analytics. The marketing examples (Table 2) give a number of interesting applications. Analytics can predict product choice and purchase. He talks about churn prediction. This explains how identifying customers at risk of ceasing to be customers can be a very effective use of analytics. Movie recommendations on Netflix use analytics. So do the coupon printers that supermarkets such as Tesco offer you. Some will find the fact that Tesco predicts what you want a bit scary. I’m personally less concerned; I’m proud of the amount of chocolate I eat and don’t mind who knows it. [2021 note, just dark chocolate now but still a lot of it].

He has interesting stories about how analytical teams can work together when various elements of the team bring complementary skills.

Trending
Audio Mining And Marketing: Great Potential

Predictive Analytics And Vast Search

One thing I like is that he isn’t simply a booster for predictive analytics and big data more generally. He draws attention to the challenge of vast search, or the multiple comparisons problem.

The casual “mining” of data… often involves vast search, making it all too easy to dig up a false claim.

Siegel, 2016, page 140

Check enough data and you will find spurious correlations, see here.

Spurious Correlations: Check Enough Data And You’ll Begin To See Connections
Spurious Correlations: Check Enough Data And You’ll Begin To See Connections

He suggests the problem isn’t bigger data but wider data. The problem is not that you have a lot of data, it is that you have a lot of different things that you can test. If you test enough potential connections some will look statistically significantly merely by chance. Be careful.

Siegel has a great book — I am very happy to recommend it.

For more on analytics see here, here, and here.

Read: Eric Siegel (2016) Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie or Die, (Revised and Updated) Wiley.

Share on Social Media
twitter facebook linkedin reddit

  • Using Data In Decisions
  • The Brussels Effect
  • Communicating Numbers
  • Market Research Lessons

MASB’s Universal Marketing Dictionary

Need a marketing definition? Use MASB’s Universal Marketing Dictionary. Click for the MASB Universal Marketing Dictionary

Pages in Marketing Thought

  • A Plea About Language Used In Marketing
  • Advice For The Marketing Academic Job Market
  • Behavioral Econ For Kids: The Cartoon Book
  • Data Visualization Advice
  • Machine Learning (ML) And Marketing: What Should You Know?
  • Marketing In The Movies
  • Marketing Metrics 4th Edition Book
    • Chapter of Marketing Metrics 4th Edition, Free Sample
  • Marketing PhD Applications
  • Marketing Thought Website Data
  • Neil Bendle
  • Popular Marketing Metrics: How Not To Mess Them Up
    • Brand Valuation: Progress But Lots More Needed
    • Customer Equity: Nice Idea, Bit Of A Mess In Execution
    • How To Use, And Misuse, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
    • Is ROI The Most Abused Term In Marketing?
    • Market Share: Always An Indicator Never A Target
    • Marketing Accounts: A Better Way To Measure Marketing Performance
    • Measuring Competition With The Bendle Panda Index
    • Net Promoter Score: Sadly Not As Magical As Supporters Suggest
    • Profit Measurement: Choose Your Own Level Is Problematic
    • Tobin’s Q: Why Academics Should Listen To Managers
    • Total Q, A New Improved Tobin’s Q? Not By Much
    • Value Of A Like: Do Not Use For Budgeting
  • Public Policy, Behavioral Economics and Marketing
  • Recommended Books
  • Sustainable Marketing Strategy
    • B Corp Research Papers
    • Marketing Strategy
      • Measuring Culture Is A Challenge, But Don’t Be Silly
      • Rationality And Marketing Strategy
      • Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
      • Strategy And Evolutionary Thinking
  • Sustainable Marketing Strategy Cases
©2023 Marketing Thought | Built using WordPress and Responsive Blogily theme by Superb
Go to mobile version