Author: anacanhoto

How can we make danger more palpable?

I was clearing my e-mail inbox, and came across this link to a news article on the BBC website. It illustrates a very common marketing trick, but with a twist. The old trick Products have a mixture of tangible and intangible attributes. Tangible attributes can be seen and felt and, thus, offer a good clue … Continue reading How can we make danger more palpable?

Benefits of using social media in target marketing

The practice of profiling the different needs and preferences of customers in a market, in order to decide which groups to focus on and how best to serve them, is a well established one in marketing. The process may be broadly divided in three steps, namely: Moira Clark, Paul Fennemore and myself set out to … Continue reading Benefits of using social media in target marketing

New paper: Segmentation practices in the age of the social customer

I am delighted to let you know that the paper ‘Segmentation practices in the age of the social customer’, which I co-authored with Moira Clark and Paul Fennemore, has been published in the Journal of Strategic Marketing. It is available here. The paper reports on research that we conducted into whether traditional segmentation approaches are … Continue reading New paper: Segmentation practices in the age of the social customer

So this is how Facebook sees me

You know what they say: on Facebook, you are not the customer; you are the product. Facebook collects our identity and activity (updates, likes and shares) information. This information is processed by Facebook’s algorithms, and churns out targets for advertisers to promote their products to. Naturally, Facebook keeps their algorithms secret. Though, much has been … Continue reading So this is how Facebook sees me

Too big to fail

I was interviewed, recently, for a school project on financial services. One of the questions concerned the reasons why, sometimes, a bank is described as 'too big to fail'. Here is my take. Anything to add to help this Y12 student? Question: Why was Bank [name of bank] described as 'too big to fail'? Financial … Continue reading Too big to fail

The importance of asking ‘why’

My friend Tim Kourdi brought my attention to this presentation by Professor Clayton Christensen about a market research study done with milkshake consumers: If you abstract from the presentation's background and the fact that he keeps describing the act of buying food items as 'hiring' ***seriously, what's going on there?*** this is, actually, a neat … Continue reading The importance of asking ‘why’

Data collection? There is an app for that

I guess it was only a matter of time. There are apps for virtually any aspect of our personal and professional lines. So, I suppose that it was only a matter of time for a researcher to come up with an app to help with data collection. The researcher is Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist … Continue reading Data collection? There is an app for that

#FollowFriday: @thefirstwebsite

#followfriday (or #ff) is a tradition started by Micah Baldwin (according to Mashable), whereby you name Twitter user your followers should know about. In addition to naming interesting users on Twitter, I provide a bit of background information on them in here. Enjoy!   To celebrate 20 years of making the software required to run a … Continue reading #FollowFriday: @thefirstwebsite

Graduation time at Oxford Brookes University

Today, at Oxford Brookes University, we celebrate the graduation of the students that joined our MSc Marketing and MSc eMarketing programme in September 2011. It is a wonderful occasion - the students come back with their families and we celebrate their achievements together. I am bursting with pride for them. The students' names are called … Continue reading Graduation time at Oxford Brookes University