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9/4/2008
I was reading a curious paper yesterday. It starts with the following paragraph: " On July 4, 1997, NASA landed the Pathfinder spacecraft on the surface of Mars. This “Mission to Mars” captured media attention worldwide over the course of the following months, and during this period, candy maker Mars Inc. also noticed a rather unusual increase in sales (White 1997). Although the Mars Bar takes its name from the company founder and not from Earth’s neighboring planet, consumers apparently responded to news about the planet Mars by purchasing more Mars Bars. This was a lucky turn of events for the candy company, but what does it mean for understanding consumer choice?" Although the authors suggest that this is a 'lucky turn', it might be not so lucky after all. I'm pretty sure that word 'raider' is more common in English than the word 'twix'. If you would believe what is being argued by Jonah Berger in that paper, we should use brand names that "exist". Watching Lara Croft in Tomb RAIDER or Indiana in RAIDERS of the lost ark, might boost the sales of Raider, but not of Twix. Thus, picking an "existing word" as a brand name might enhance sales. I'm wondering whether this may explain why Windows was more readily adopted than Apple. Anyone in for a word count comparing "window" vs "apple"? 8/29/2008Leonard Lee, assistant marketing professor at Columbia University, has once again published a very cool paper. He shows that physically attractive people not only are popular targets for romantic pursuits, but also tend to flock together: More attractive people tend to prefer potential dates who are more attractive. This means that "ugly" people have to settle with "ugly" people. The cool thing about this paper is that it is demonstrated that ugly people are not blind: Less attractive people are willing to accept less attractive others as dating partners, but they do not delude themselves into thinking that ugly others are more physically attractive than they really are. Whether this means that love cannot makes us blind is not clear, but it is evident that ugly individuals are fully aware of the fact that they are dating ugly partners. That is probably why a question like "is she pretty?" is sometimes answered with "she is really nice"... 7/29/2008
The Tour de France is over. Whatever cyclists swallow and inject: I continue to like it. What a pity it's over. And yes, it was a rather boring Tour, but if we want a clean sport, we shouldn't complain. (Although I must admit that I adored that attack of Ricco)
The mecenas of the Silence-Lotto team, Marc Coucke, said in an interview that the yellow jersey of Cadel Evans has lead to less snoring in the world. I'm wondering what the commercial impact of a yellow jersey might be and I think it is absolutely striking that a cycling event could increase the sales of a drug. I'm pretty sure that our marketing modelers might come up with fascinating tools to test whether the increase in sales of Silence, might be driven by the legs of Cadel Evans. Time-series modeling should be able to provide an answer to that question. And why not test this hypothesis for each sponsor in the tour, and for the green, white and other jerseys. I even believe that the negative publicitity due to doping might not be so harmful for Saunier Duval after all. I'm interested to see the results. Who will test this? 7/16/2008Monica Wadwha, a great graduate student from Stanford, has recently published a paper in the Journal of Marketing Research. The findings bear very close resemblance to some of the findings I've investigated myself: I have demonstrated that touching a bra leads you to want money or candy bars right now. The recent paper in JMR demonstrates that sampling a good tasting drink has similar effects as touching lingerie: Sipping from a flavored beverage that tastes good not only enhances subsequent consumption of Pepsi but also prompts people to seek anything rewarding such as chocolate, a massage, or a dream vacation in Bora Bora. What I find spectacular and interesting is that Monica Wadhwa demonstrates that this effect is regulated by the exact same mechanisms as the effect of sexual cues. Whether you see bikinis, whether you smell chocolate cookies, whether you sample Hawaiian punch, whether you taste milk chocolate... does not seem to make that big of a difference: all of these cues lead to the same reward seeking behaviors. 6/25/2008
Social networking on the web 2.0 is all very well, but what can society really get out of this except for the economic loss of people adjusting their profile on MSN, facebook, myspace, hyves or the like or twittering away voids in between coffee-breaks.
(Wow, just re-read this and I think I'm getting old)
Anyway, now we can say: charity! Social engagement! Culture! Because amazee.com is a full-fledged web 2.0 application that encourages people to get together in the pursuit of fullfilling their projects. The best three projects even get $10.000 to accomplish their goal. And like it should be in a web 2.0 application: you get to decide what are the best three projects.
...or at least, that's what he reveiled during his interview on national radio about his JCR-publication about sexual stimuli and generalized impatience in men.
I figured him more imaginative I must say. Anyhow, the interview can be listened to here. Only in Dutch however.
Update: a link to StuBru's page about the interview here 6/24/2008It seems that our discipline is raising in status. Marketing professors are now publishing in the most impactful journals in the world (see e.g., this post). In the latest issue of PNAS, Jonah Berger, assistant professor of marketing at Wharton, studied whether the location of a polling station can influence how people vote. It mattered: Individuals who voted in schools were more likely to support a proposition to increase funding for education. This leaves voters more vulnerable to being swayed by their surroundings... We know that pleasant music in a store might influence spending, but it strikes me that important decisions such as votes might be susceptible to these ambient cues. ( Nature News has an excellent summary of the paper). 6/17/2008I've always been amazed by the use of bumper stickers. Why would someone advertise for a radio station or a theme park on his/her car? The owner is not even paid for attaching these ugly stickers, although we do demand a fee when a billboard is attached to our house. I have always found this an intriguing phenomenon. It ruins the design of a car in my opinion. A recent study has now confirmed what I have always suspected: You shouldn't trust people that attach stickers to their car. It's better to avoid them. 6/15/2008Did you ever wonder about the length of the signatures of your colleagues? New research has shown that the signature of an email may function like a sportscar or some other signaling product, albeit a signal that is easy to fake. A recent paper in the European Journal of Social Psychology has shown that professors with lower rates of publications and citations displayed more professional titles in their email signatures compared to professors with higher publication and citation rates. Next time i see "professor doctor engineer" on a business card, i know what he/she is hiding :-) ( full paper). 6/12/2008
Several newspapers and blogs reported on the publication of Bram's JCR paper about sexual stimuly and generalized impatience.
Of course, articles like these are a great excuse for some very nice supporting graphic material, like this
(Property of "De Standaard")
Or this
(Property of "NRC Handelsblad")
Allow me to say "Score!", and congrats to Bram.
Update: also a very nice and accurate summary on Dutch Magazine Carp's website here !
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12/8/2008 3:00 PM
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ORSTAT and Marketing Seminar - Bruce Hardie
When: maandag 8 december 2008 15:00-16:30 (GMT+01:00) Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris.
Where: 03.101
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Customer-Base Analysis with Discrete-Time Transaction Data
Many businesses track repeat transactions on a discrete-time basis....
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