Challenges of using social media in target marketing

I wrote before about the findings from research conducted by myself, Moira Clark and Paul Fennemore on how social media enables organisations to obtain very detailed insight about markets and target customers, and to deliver tailored propositions. However, at the moment, there are still a number of challenges preventing organisations from achieving the potential value … Continue reading Challenges of using social media in target marketing

I am writing about customer selection during an economic recession

... but at the rate at which this paper is progressing, the recession will be well and truly over before the paper is done. It's not even the case that I do not like the topic. I do. Very much, indeed. It's a really interesting take on the question of what makes a customer good … Continue reading I am writing about customer selection during an economic recession

The downside of choice

Earlier today I was at an information session, meeting people interested in post-graduate education at the institution where I am employed, Oxford Brookes University. I was doing my best to show the potential candidates all the options that they had access to. We talked about the different modes of study (i.e., full time vs. part … Continue reading The downside of choice

When waiting is good for business

This week I came across an interesting counter-intuitive (for me) finding: slowing down service may improve the perceived quality of the product. Watching the video of Steve Souders’ presentation at Velocity 2013 (below), from about minute 3:08 onwards, I learned that: - Designers of the Blogger platform installed an artificial delay between the moment a user … Continue reading When waiting is good for business

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’