Studying sentiment on Twitter is… complicated

Emotions are key to explain and anticipate consumer behaviour, and sentiment analysis offers marketers a way of measuring and summarising those emotions. Emotions displayed on social media conversations, in particular, are very appealing for research, as these platforms offer many opportunities to listen to the conversations in real time, with minimum disruption for the individuals … Continue reading Studying sentiment on Twitter is… complicated

Consumer Data and the ‘War on Terror’

The book that I co-authored with Kirstie Ball, Elizabeth Daniel, Sally Dibb, Maureen Meadows and Keith Spiller, has been featured in 'Research Reporter', the research newsletter of the Faculty of Business at Oxford Brookes University. The original article is here. Transcript below in case the link does not work for you. Surveillance, consumer data and … Continue reading Consumer Data and the ‘War on Terror’

Going along with customer lies can be good for business

Yesterday, child #2 lost a tooth. At night, he carefully placed the tooth under his pillow, for the Tooth Fairy... even though he knows, a-hem, the truth about Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. And, sure enough, this morning, when he checked under the pillow and spotted something left by the Tooth Fairy, he gave … Continue reading Going along with customer lies can be good for business

What Nash’s work means for Marketing

We learned, at the end of last month, that the mathematician John Nash had died, with his wife Alice, in a traffic accident. Nash’s work on game theory, for which he won a Nobel prize alongside John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten, has relevance to many areas of public life, from international trade negotiations to war … Continue reading What Nash’s work means for Marketing

May 2015 round-up

A belated round up, as the last few days of May (and first ones in June) were very busy, including a couple of big pieces of work due around the same time. Murphy’s law! Funnily enough, my #5pm pictures reflect exactly that: work features heavily in this month’s pictures, either directly (i.e., I was sitting … Continue reading May 2015 round-up

Google research on choice and use of mobile apps

For a customer facing company, there are many potential benefits of developing an app. It can provide valuable customer insight; it offers a vehicle for personalisation; and it can foster loyalty towards your brand, as discussed here. However, with more than 1 million apps available in Apple’s app store, alone, you really need to understand … Continue reading Google research on choice and use of mobile apps

Positioning: be different but familiar

The textbooks will tell you that the key to succeed in the market place is to differentiate yourself from competition; to carefully choose your positioning. And that means that you need to start by answering this question: What is it that only we can do? However, a recent chat over coffee, made me think of … Continue reading Positioning: be different but familiar

Day in the Life of an academic #2: of meetings and parking tickets

My ‘Day in the Life of an Academic’ post was quite popular, generating interesting discussions on and off line. So, I decided to do another one. For my second instalment, I chose Thursday (May 7th) as this was such a different day from the one I previously wrote about. It was also 43 days after … Continue reading Day in the Life of an academic #2: of meetings and parking tickets

About creativity, coffee and the need to think like a customer

Somebody told me about a very interesting TED talk on creativity. I was very intrigued, and decided to search for it when I got home. The person that mentioned the talk, said that the speaker discussed how starting to drink coffee (instead of beer) had had such a positive impact on creativity: people were lucid … Continue reading About creativity, coffee and the need to think like a customer