Merry Christmas - Marketing, psychology and the world

Santa Claus, Christmas carols, gifts, endless queues at the malls and the local post offices, house decorations and more human externalities! Christmas is here! Hohoho!! But, what does Christmas mean for us? Why "Merry Christmas"? Does Santa really exist? How could Christmas decoration both in houses and in retail stores affect our psychology? Marketers and psychologists are actually curious human beings that have studied almost every aspect of human and consumer behavior, including Christmas psychology! Santa Claus really exists? Santa Claus, also known as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas or simply "Santa", is a mythical...

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Intro to Data Mining for Marketers - Part 2

Data Preprocessing This stage is the most time-consuming stage of the data mining process. Data is never clean and in a form suitable for data mining. There are few typical data corruption problems in business databases such as duplication of the records, missing data fields, and presence of outliers. The preprocessing step involves integrating data from different sources and making choices about representing or coding certain data fields that serve as inputs to the data discovery stage. Such representation choices are needed because certain fields may contain data at level of details not considered suitable...

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Intro to Data Mining for Marketers - Part 1

Data mining can be defined as the process of "discovering patterns, meaning and insights in large datasets by using statistical and computational methods". Data mining works to analyze data stored in data warehouses that are used to store that data that is being analyzed. That particular data may come from all parts of business, from the production to the management. Managers also use data mining to decide upon marketing strategies for their product. They can use data to compare and contrast among competitors. Data mining interprets its data into real time analysis that can be used to increase sales, promote new product, or delete product...

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5+1 Successful Commercials of 2013!

The most successful commercials that really went viral so far in 2013! 5. GEICO - Hump Day 4. H&M - David Beckham Short Film 3. GoPro - Fireman Saves Kitten 2. MGM - Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise 1. Evian - Baby and Me   Lucky Star: Sony Playstation Instructional Video ...

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International Marketing - A Cultural Metaphor for Greece (Part 2)

Agon When it comes to Agon, we refer to the manner the comedy-like activities are performed in the daily life of the Greeks. Agon refers to the formal convention according to which the struggle between the characters should be scripted in order to supply the basis of the action. Agon is a formal debate which takes place between the chief characters in a Greek play, protagonist and antagonist, usually with the chorus acting as judge. We can easily spot the motives suggested by Agon in all aspects of Greek society. Politics, political actions and debates, social arenas, collectivistic activities, TV programs, etcetera are often organized...

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International Marketing - A Cultural Metaphor for Greece

Within the field of international marketing, cross-cultural consumer behavior, organization and management studies, Prof. Martin J. Gannon uses cultural metaphors to describe, compare, and analyze national cultures worldwide. In order to explore in-depth the unique cultural characteristics of a nation, Gannon adopts an emic approach, focusing on the qualitative examination of cultural symbols, practices, and institutions within their local context. For the existing cross-cultural research into a country or a nation, the most influential one is the three-dimensional approach developed by Kluckholn, Strodtbeck, Hall and Hofstede. Their...

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5+1 October Top Commercials

The latest commercials that really went viral last month! 5. Honda Illusions 4. Paul Smith Underwear 3. Samsung Galaxy Gear 2. Ray-Ban 1. Volkswagen Woofwagen   Lucky Star: Crest ...

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Neuromarketing for Companies: Can it help?

Neuromarketing is a relatively new field of marketing research which focuses on consumers' cognitive and affective response to marketing stimuli. Neuromarketing is actually a child of the eternal corporate need to sustain a decision by all possible means when the pressure is way over the possibility of a decident to fight failure. Google, Coca-Cola, BMW, Procter & Gamble, Motorola, CBS are a few of the companies who have experimented neuromarketing for the past years. We have previously referred to neuroscience and neuromarketing research here and here, yet academics are still sceptical when it...

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