Professors’ New Marekting Analytics Book Helps Managers Predict Business Outcomes

In the new world of “big data” marketers must sift through mountains of information to decide how they will attract customers. How can they target the best data to make the best decisions?

Practitioners and students of marketing analytics courses have a new resource to help them determine which marketing actions matter most and how to analyze consumer data to identify the optimal allocation of their marketing resources.

The book Cutting-Edge Marketing Analytics: Real-World Cases and Datasets for Hands-on Learning by University of Virginia Darden School of Business Professors Rajkumar Venkatesan, Paul Farris and Ronald T. Wilcox puts forth analytics as the engine that enables managers to harness big data to better predict the outcomes of their business and marketing efforts.

“Marketing as a discipline has become more science than art,” said Venkatesan. “Our new book helps practitioners and students learn how to understand the science behind the numbers as well as the nuances. Readers will be able to take a practical approach to balancing access to large amounts of data with the more nuanced needs of management.”

WHY THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT

A key differentiator is the book’s real-life case studies that give readers a hands-on approach to working with analysis, while emphasizing all three aspects of marketing analytics: statistical analysis, experiments and managerial intuition.

“The majority of our cases come from real companies. They aren’t disguised or fictitious,” said Venkatesan. “Cases focused on real companies enhance the richness of class discussion and students’ ability to appreciate the contextual factors that go into a managerial decision beyond analytics.”

Readers of Cutting-Edge Marketing Analytics will gain:

• Understanding of the importance of marketing analytics for the futuristic and systematic allocation of marketing resources
• Knowledge of how to use analytics to develop predictive marketing dashboards for an organization
• Insight on the biases inherent to analytics triggered by secondary data, the cost-benefit tradeoffs in analytics, and the balance between analysis and intuition
• The ability to conduct data analysis through linear regression, logistic regression, cluster analysis and analysis of variance models to address strategic marketing challenges

Features of the book include:

• Chapters and case studies will emphasize intuition and logic. Professionals with a basic understanding of statistics will be able to implement the analytics techniques.
• How-to videos on each analytics technique supplement the book’s teachings and are available at Marketing Analytics Initiative at Darden, a website hosted by the authors.
• Detailed teaching notes and an instructor’s manual are available through Darden Business Publishing.

Also, Executive Education courses expand upon Darden’s resources aimed at helping today’s marketers build and maintain enduring brands. Venkatesan co-teaches the upcoming programs Strategic Marketing Management, from 22 to 26 September, and Strategic Marketing Analytics, from 10 to 13 November. The target audience is mid- and senior-level marketing executives.