Considerations on "Correlation is not causation" Lately I have been promising myself to avoid balance sheets (which is a very serious activity, not by chance carried out by professionals) and New Year's resolutions (an activity that I find mainly useless, often misleading, and I must tell you, even morally questionable). Some scattered readings have pushed... Continue Reading →
Ecommerce vs. shop – The world seen upside down
Baruffe chiozzotte in digital sauce There is an interesting aspect of the storm in a teacup that exploded with the invitation of Matteo Salvini (a politician in Italy) to prefer small businesses to Amazon for Christmas shopping. The interesting aspect does not lie in the communion of loving senses between a right-wing nationalist political leader... Continue Reading →
The biggest Deprivation Study
Reflections on doing market research in time of COVID19 The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge Daniel J. Boorstin Deprivation Studies are a research methodology initially developed among psychologists at an academic level, which aims to "prevent" an organism or a subject from benefiting from something it wants... Continue Reading →
Is DIY in Market Research dead?
In the last few delirious months of crossing and chasing each other of information on infections, hospitalisations and deaths for ("of", "with", "in conjunction with"…) Coronavirus, those who, like me, deal with data - their collection, their selection, their modelling and interpretation - have watched astonished at the peremptoriness with which conclusions were drawn (in... Continue Reading →
Is sample building an opinion? Short dissertation about “root biases”
Recently a person informed me about a study published on Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: Music training alters the course of adolescent auditory development. THe scientists observed a group of 40 adolescents: 20 of them chose in-school music training. Please wait: I will tell you what other... Continue Reading →
“Social” is not a department, it is an attitude
There are a lot of legends in corporate world. "Companies must be customer centric" is one of them. I will write about it in the next post. "We are social" is another one and it is a typical claim by any given company. Companies often mix up "to have social network pages" with "being social".... Continue Reading →
You don’t need a weatherman… Time to face Customers
I participated to the annual ABI (the Italian Association of Banks) Conference "Dimensione Cliente" (in italian, Dimension: Customer) in 2012 and in 2013. The Conference hosts several speeches by bankers, consultancy firms and MR agencies. I read some papers by 2014 edition. And I continue to think "Something doesn't work". Bankers talk us about different... Continue Reading →
The ultimate or the last question? How NPS could compromise your understanding
The number of top executives who is asking for NPS (Net Promoter Score) has grown permanently since the famous article by Bain & Company mentor Frederick F. Reichheld (The One Number You Need to Grow, Harvard Business Review, December 2003). Main reason of such success is not the NPS's predictive ability but its own simplicity.... Continue Reading →
Giancarlo Livraghi – In memoriam
When I came to know it, I held my tongue. I expected a jumble of comments by more or less known "big guns", however more appointed than me. After all, he was the "Livraghi" in Livraghi, Ogilvy & Mather (people who work in marketing industry should know what does it mean to have the... Continue Reading →
You! Hypocrite Research Spender! – mon semblable, -mon frère!
Pic by Erik Karits Thomas Stearns Eliot ends The Burial of the dead (first part of Waste Land) with an excerpt from Charles Baudelaire's preface to Fleurs du Mal: "You! Hypocrite Lecteur! – mon semblable, -mon frère!" (in Baudelaire's original there isn't the word "You!"). We can translate it in "You! Hypocrite reader, my likeness, my... Continue Reading →