Direct / Interactive Marketing Research Summit

Earlier this year, over 8,000 students from 47 countries competed in Google’s inaugural business competition, The Google Online Marketing Challenge. Google’s Jim Oliver provides his perspective on direct marketing education and the online environment. He will share recent trends, survey results on the teaching and learning aspects of the Challenge, and future directions for direct marketing education.

Jim Oliver, Group Quantitative Manager, at Google joined the company in 2007 as a Group Product Marketing Manager on the Quantitative Marketing team. With combined technical background and strong research experience, he manages the US marketing research team and focuses on publishing broad industry-level studies in partnership with Google's large advertisers. Jim has done metrics and measurement work for HP, as well as stints at Apple, Accenture, and a private equity group. Most recently, he spent 3.5 years at eBay, managing their database marketing, analytics, and data infrastructure teams. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from Wharton.

• Right Timing Analytics. For example, Staples and Fidelity report doubling the performance of their marketing campaigns by zeroing in on the timing vs. person.
• Right Messaging Analytics. Schwab and Wells Fargo show significant returns by focusing on relevancy driven by Trigger-based Marketing and Lifecycle messaging respectively.
• Artificial Intelligence augmentation for the arrival of Web 3.0
• Text Mining methodologies to account for the exponential growth in social networking
• Online and offline integration and optimization methodologies
• Marketing Mix Analytics that can keep pace with channel proliferation

As online marketers gain more experience, they are experimenting with an ever-widening array of so-called Web 2.0 trends in an effort to drive customers to the site and improve conversion rates. But what do consumers see as the top priorities for online customer experience – and what will the future hold? Based on research conducted at the UCR Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, Professor Hoffman will examine the research implications of several important Web 2.0+ trends, including social networks and user-generated content, and use a consumer perspective to predict what lies ahead.

Donna L. Hoffman is the Chancellor’s Chair and Co-Director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, the world’s leading university research center dedicated to improving the effectiveness of online retailing, at the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Riverside. Professor Hoffman’s award-winning academic research is focused on online customer experience and Internet consumer behavior and she publishes widely on the topic and speaks to industry groups when she is not studying online consumers in her lab.

• How do firms decide the customers to whom they should provide preferential treatment which clearly costs more money and resources?
• To which customer they should interact through inexpensive channels, e.g., Internet, touch tone phone?
• How do firms decide the timing of an offering to a customer?
• What kind of resources should the firm allocate to conduct future business with that customer?
• On what metric should a firm base its acquisition and retention strategies?
• Should firms focus on investing in brands or investing in building customer relationships?
• Should firms encourage customers to shop in multiple channels or is there a fear of cannibalization?
• Finally, can a firm identify customers who are likely to quit buying from it and further take preventive action to retain the customers?

V. Kumar will present several case studies to demonstrate the practice of brand and customer value management by both B2B and B2C firms. The successful implementation of direct / interactive marketing based approaches in these firms has resulted in increased revenues, profit and ROI.

V. Kumar (VK) is the inaugural holder of the Richard and Susan Lenny Distinguished Chair in Marketing, and the Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Brand and Customer Management, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He was previously the ING Chair Professor of Marketing, and Executive Director, ING Center for Financial Services in the School of Business, University of Connecticut.  He has been recognized with over 20 teaching and research excellence awards including two lifetime achievement awards in Marketing Strategy and Inter-Organizational Issues, as well as several best paper awards for his work in prestigious academic journals. In addition, he has published over 125 articles in many scholarly journals in marketing including the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Interactive Marketing, and Operations Research, book chapters and books.  His books include Managing Customers for Profit, Customer Relationship Management, Marketing Research, and International Marketing Research.   He was recently listed as one of the top five ranked scholars in marketing worldwide.  He has taught in numerous universities and has presented executive education programs for various firms worldwide. He has consulted for numerous Global Fortune 500 firms and received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

SATURDAY October 11 *

9:45 AM

EDUCATION TRACK SESSIONS

Registration / Check-in Opens

Concurrent Special Topic Panels

• Best Practices and New Perspectives: How to Teach the Creative Aspects of Direct / Interactive Marketing
• Integrating the Interactive & Direct Marketing (IDM) Lab into Direct Marketing Courses

Concurrent Sessions

• Competitive Papers
  • Creative Strategy in Direct / Interactive Marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications Instruction
  • Direct Marketing Essentials: The Importance of Teaching Segmentation, The Gains Table, Lift Charts and the Gini Coefficient
  • The Great Case Debate: Comprehensive Experiential Learning in an Undergraduate Marketing Capstone Course
    
    
• Working Papers
• An Integrated Approach to Interactive Advertising and News Design Pedagogy Using Informed Design and Research: Research Informed Development Models
• Developing an Interdisciplinary Master's Degree Program in IMC: A Contemporary Approach
• The Interactive E-folio: A Marketing Tool for Graduating Business Students?
• Using Simulations to Retain Direct Marketing Concepts
• Student Perceptions of Direct / Interactive Marketing

12:45-
1:45 PM

Concurrent Special Topic Panels

• Teaching Introduction to Direct Marketing: Three Different Views
• Client Based Experiential Learning in Capstone Classes

2:00-3:20 PM

Concurrent Sessions

• Competitive Papers
  • Getting Back On-Message: IMC Courses Need More Emphasis on Direct / Interactive Marketing
  • Direct / Interactive Marketing in IMC Education: Marketing vs. Mass Communication Approaches
  • Student Satisfaction with Collegiate American Marketing Association Membership and Exposure to Interactive Integrated Marketing Communication Tactics
  • Modeling Social Media Use: Bridging the Communication Gap in Higher Education
    
    
• Special Topic Panel
  • From Interactive to Immersive: Marketing Education Takes a Virtual Leap of Faith

3:30-3:55 PM

Best Paper Session

• BEST PAPER - Upgrading to Web 2.0:An Experiential Project to Build a Direct Marketing Wiki

SUNDAY October 12 *

7:30-8:00 AM

Registration and Continental Breakfast

Concurrent Sessions

RESEARCH TRACK

• CLV Models/Methods/Issues
  • Modeling Lifetime Value in a Non-contractual Setting with Markov Models
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): No One Said it Would be Easy
    
    
• Dynamics (Cross-Channel/Over Time)
  • Adding Bricks to Clicks: The Effects of Store Openings on Sales Through Direct Channels
  • Understanding the Service-Profit Chain Using Individual Level Data for an Online Retailer

EDUCATION TRACK

• Special Topic Panel
  • Teaching Quantitative Skills to Direct/Database Marketing Students: Opportunities and Challenges

Concurrent Sessions

RESEARCH TRACK

• CLV Models/Methods/Issues
  • Real-Time Evaluation of Email Campaign Performance
  • Managing Data Quality and Time-Span Coverage for CRM - Cost/Benefit Tradeoffs
    
    
• Dynamics (Cross-Channel/Over Time)
  • Balancing Online and Offline Direct Channels in Business-to-Business
  • Modeling the Equation of Customers' Service Portfolios

EDUCATION TRACK

• Special Topic Panel
  • Web 2.0 Opportunities and Challenges for Direct Marketing Educators

Concurrent Sessions

RESEARCH TRACK

• Customer Feedback
  • A Study of Online Word of Mouth and Firm Performance
  • Online User Ratings: When and How Consumers Post and the Effect It Has on Sales
    
    
• Implementation Issues
  • How Does an Obligation to Collect Sales Tax Affect Consumer and Firm Behavior?
  • Privacy Orientation: An Empirical Study of Firms' Information Privacy Behaviors

EDUCATION TRACK

• Special Topic Panel
  • Teaching Privacy in an IMC World

Concurrent Sessions

RESEARCH TRACK

• Customer Feedback
  • "I'm Here, But Maybe Not for Long": Using Complaints to Predict and Value Customers
  • An Empirical Analysis of Product Returns in Direct Marketing
    
    
• Implementation Issues
  • Understanding the Effective Use of Color in Direct Marketing Communications
  • Contextual Determinants of the Predictive Accuracy of Binary Prediction Models

EDUCATION TRACK

• Special Topic Panel
  • Integrating the Collegiate ECHO in Direct / Interactive Marketing Courses: Undergraduate and Graduate Perspectives