When Marketing Investment Pays Off
Better and more numerous data on customers and the market have long been the holy grail of marketing experts and represents the goal towards which companies have channeled important investments over the last twenty years. "Already in 2017, however, by completing a first step of the current research on the impact of Big Data on innovation in service companies, we recorded a certain frustration among the managers, both Italian and in the UK and the US, because this economic commitment seemed not to translate proportionally into a greater competitive advantage," comments Gabriele Troilo, professor of marketing, introducing the new paper How and when do big data investments pay off? The role of marketing affordances and service innovation.
"It emerged, in fact, that for a company it is not enough to make an upgrade in technological terms, but it is necessary to promote a cultural and organizational change". From these conclusions starts the second chapter of the research, published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, in which the team tests the effectiveness of some Big Data Marketing Affordances, or specific marketing actions enabled by investments in technologies and data analysis, in producing tangible business benefits. "In particular, we have identified three actions", Troilo describes: "Recognizing customer behavior patterns; responding in real-time to market demands; and being 'ambidextrous', that is, being able to manage the rational and creative parts of marketing at the same time, information that explains the current market and information that foreshadows new developments. These three capabilities are able to generate returns on investments both directly, that is by improving operational efficiency, and indirectly, acting as a transmission belt for innovation in marketing, from communication to customer experience."
Where a research project concludes, it often happens that another one begins. The construction site for a third step of the study is already operational and this time it concerns the relationship between specific investments in marketing technologies based on artificial intelligence and the effects on the changes in the stock market value from 2000 to 2019 of about 500 companies listed on the Standard & Poor's index. "It is a significant amount of data, to which are added the information contained in the letters that administrators attach to the quarterly reports. For this reason, it required the creation of an ad hoc algorithm", concludes the teacher. "The computer took a few weeks, but it managed to grind the data, now it's up to us to analyze and comment on them and in a year we will be ready to reveal the results."