andreweverett360 Book Review, Marketing

Hillstrom’s Pricing

Hillstrom’s Pricing: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Optimizing Customer Behavior via Prices

by Kevin Hillstrom

This fascinating booklet is about how the mix of price levels a retailer offers in its selection of merchandise affects customer behavior. In his 30-year career in retail, Kevin Hillstrom worked for Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, and Land’s End as well as 225 clients in his consulting practice.

The author examines sales data by price range, merchandise category, channel, and customer life cycle (new customers vs. repeat customers) over a span of five years. Most pages include a spreadsheet or graph showing data from a hypothetical company with declining sales, along with commentary on how the author analyzes the numbers to figure out what’s going on. The target audience for the booklet appears to be catalog and ecommerce retailers. Continue reading “Hillstrom’s Pricing” →

andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers

HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers

The objective of this book is to help managers make better data-driven decisions by working with data analysts and data scientists. The guide is a compendium adapted from 23 previously published Harvard Business Review and hbr.org articles.

“Framing a problem… is the most important stage of the analytical process for a consumer of big data. It’s where your business experience and intuition matter most. After all, a hypothesis is simply a hunch about how the world works. The difference with analytical thinking, of course, is that you use rigorous methods to test the hypothesis.”

Continue reading “HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers” →

andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

Good Charts Workbook: Tips, Tools, and Exercises for Making Better Data Visualizations

Good Charts Workbook: Tips, Tools, and Exercises for Making Better Data Visualizations

by Scott Berinato

A good visual representation of data can be invaluable for communicating the meaning behind the numbers. This book walks the reader through the thought process and choices in creating visualizations for a variety of cases. “It’s rare you don’t have to make a trade-off to create a good chart… Most of the time there isn’t one right answer, one right chart.” The main topics covered in the book are clarity, color, chart types, and persuasion.

Clarity. Berinato emphasizes decluttering to put the focus on what you want to communicate. “Take stuff away… Remove redundancy… Limit color and eye travel… Use your headline to describe the main idea of a chart, not its structure.”

Continue reading “Good Charts Workbook: Tips, Tools, and Exercises for Making Better Data Visualizations” →

andreweverett360 Book Review, Marketing

Big Data Marketing

big-data-marketing

Big Data Marketing: Engage Your Customers More Effectively and Drive Value

by Lisa Arthur

“Why don’t you know your customers better?” Lisa Arthur’s diagnosis: “Your data is fragmented.”

“Today’s marketers must engage buyers and prospects with conversations, solicit and act on customer feedback, and deliver experiences that are personalized, timely, and relevant.” Big data marketing makes this possible. Continue reading “Big Data Marketing” →