Last week, the Marketing Sciences group held its annual meeting of analysts. Employees from London, Germany, Detroit, Toledo, Fenton, and Chicago joined the staff in Minneapolis for three days. This wasn’t one of those fluffy conferences with celebrity speakers – it was a geek fest. Marketing science types from around the company presented state of the art techniques and methods they are working on. We talked about conjoint analysis, with topics like nested logits, diminishing returns, attribute non-attendance, and formatting of partial profile designs. We talked about mixture models, including applications of multi-level models, insights from coupling uniform and binomial distributions, and how mixture discriminant analysis may improve segment classification. We talked about new approaches to drivers of loyalty, like marginal utility analysis and anchored maximum difference scaling. We tested causal search methods like BayesiaLab and Tetrad, and compared the quality of conjoint tasks on mobile phones versus online. Pardon my geek, I’ll return to English now.
We call our internal conference Maritz Advanced Research Techniques (MART), and I dare say it has more valuable content than the AMA version known as the ART Forum. The conference reminded me of the depth, support, and thirst for excellence of our marketing sciences group at Maritz.
The MART conference would not be possible without the support of Maritz, who funds the traveling and hotel costs, and gives us the time to do this research. MART is one of the most prominent examples of Maritz investing in marketing sciences. Another example of the company’s investment is that we send each senior analytical person to at least one outside conference each year, and more than that if they present. This is why Maritz often has several employees at each of the major conferences. After the conferences, we share what we took away from the conference. The end result is that our staff is really familiar with the latest content from outside conferences.
On top of all this, we have biweekly internal meetings discussing new analytical topics. We also have a monthly newsletter “What’s New in MSD” that goes out to all our analytical staff, along with senior researchers, sales folks, upper management, etc. This keeps them up to date with some of the key developments in marketing science.
Finally, we have an amazing commitment to Research on Research. Each year, Maritz funds many of its own surveys. I am most interested in testing out new analytical methods to give us a competitive advantage and pass that advantage on to our clients. But we also test more general things. For instance, much of our ROR is about mobile phones – what kinds of questions can we ask, what impact they have on results, etc. Right now we are also currently doing the most extensive ROR test of rating scales that has ever been done. The results will likely be published later in collaboration with some academics. This is an example of Maritz’s commitment to being a true leader in marketing sciences.
I am frequently asked at conferences about how Maritz is able to have such a strong marketing sciences group. And now you know. But I have a second point in writing this blog. It really is a note of gratitude. It’s gratitude toward Maritz, for its financial investment in marketing sciences. But it’s also gratitude toward the people who work in our group. It is the people who bring forth new ideas, who make possible an open discussion, and are true seekers of the best analytical methods. So a big thank you to Maritz and its marketing sciences group.
