Experiments for Business Decision Making (Center Special Topic)

Catalog description

EXPERIMENTS FOR BUSINESS DECISION MAKING: In the past decade, massive shifts in how companies interact with their customers have suddenly made field experiments an economically feasible way to learn about a variety of business questions such as what types of promotions are most effective, what products should be stocked at a store, how e-mail promotions should be designed, how sales staff should be compensated, etc. Many marketers engaged in online retailing, direct-marketing, online advertising, media management, etc. are rapidly embracing a "test and learn" philosophy and a number of platforms such as Google Website Optimizer, have been developed to facilitate rigorous field experiments in the online environment. Just as with the quality revolution in manufacturing during the 1980s and 1990s, the rapid rise of the "test and learn" philosophy in marketing has created a huge demand for those who can design, field, and analyze marketing experiments. Through this course, you will learn and practice a wide range of critical skills, from the statistical methods used to design and analyze experiments to the management and strategy required to execute an experiment and act on the results. Although the cases and examples will focus on marketing problems, the material covered can be applied in a number of other domains particularly operations management and product design.