Analysis

Analysis / Tools & Techniques — No Comments
3
Nov 09

Using search engines to measure social behavior

Let’s start with a simple premise: The more often something happens, the more often people write about it.

Sounds reasonable, right?

Albert Saiz and Uri Simonsohn, in their article “Downloading Wisdom from Online Crowds,” demonstrate that the relative frequency of documents returned by a search engine can be a good measure of how frequently a phenomenon occurs.  For example, if you want to know the relative cost of living in all U.S. cities (or the relative amount of corruption, or perhaps even how good the golfing is) then simply searching for “Dallas cost-of-living” and “San Francisco cost-of-living” may give you a great index.  If it works as advertised, this is a fantastic general research tool for analysts and marketing researchers. Let’s take a look.
Continue reading →

Analysis — 4 Comments
21
Oct 09

What it takes to compete (and win!) on analytics

Things have come a long way since the days of analyzing Web server logs (raise your hand if you were at THAT party.) Web analytics tools like Google Analytics, SiteCatalyst, and WebtrendsAnalytics have brought basic site tracking and reporting to the masses, often with little more than dropping some javascript on the page.  Closer to home, Business Intelligence (BI) and data warehousing tools such as MicroStrategy and Microsoft’s suite of tools provide a structured view into in-house data.  Google Site Optimizer, SiteSpect, and tools like Omniture Recommendations go so far as to provide intelligent testing, targeting, and recommendation abilities to companies that even a few years ago would have met serious challenges developing these competencies in-house.

But these tools are not how you compete on analytics. Continue reading →

Analysis / Online Dating — No Comments
17
Oct 09

Why “The One Number You Need To Grow” is one number you should probably avoid

In 2003, Frederick Reichheld published a Harvard Business Review article entitled The One Number You Need to Grow.  Reichheld’s article described a method for computing a simple, easy-to-understand customer satisfaction metric called the Net Promoter Score — and ushered in a flavor-of-the-month management practice that has left a bad taste in the mouth of academics and serious marketing researchers Continue reading →

Analysis / Online Dating — No Comments
16
Oct 09

Is the online dating industry propping up Google’s ad revenue numbers?

A few days ago, Frédéric Peters (Cupidon at Cupidon.be) posted an interesting question to the LinkedIn’s Internet Dating Executive Alliance group: Given the oft-cited success of the online dating industry, what percentage of Google’s ad revenue is driven by the online dating industry?

Based on Frédéric’s question, I felt compelled to run a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate of the share of Google’s ad revenue contributed by the U.S. online dating industry based on Continue reading →

Analysis / Career — No Comments
15
Apr 08

LinkedIn Best Answer: What should MBAs learn about marketing research?

A question was asked on the LinkedIn Q&A forum: “What should MBAs learn about marketing research?” My response was selected as Best Answer to this question, so I wanted to share.

Question (paraphrased):

What should MBA students learn about marketing research? Which research methods should they be exposed to?

Answer:

MBAs should learn to be advanced consumers of marketing research; they should NOT be learning how to actually perform the research.

Ultimately, business managers are more likely to be making the call about whether to spend resources conducting research than to be doing the research themselves. Accordingly, one of the most important things for MBAs to know about marketing research is how to make the decision of whether to initiate a research project.

On its face, the decision calculus is simple: Will the benefit of having this information exceed the cost of acquiring it? Real-world scenarios can sometimes be less clear, but this question is where you should start. Overall, becoming an educated consumer of marketing research offers a much greater benefit to the MBA than does seeing a few examples from the vast catalog of research methods.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →