I love this graphic from Joel Book, ExactTarget's Education Chief because it illustrates how the topic of multi-channel attribution
often seems to me like the search for the Holy Grail (the Last Cup of Christ). The result can be elusive. Given the proliferation of channels, the complexity
of the issue, cross-firm differences in resource allocation and other aspects
of implementation, is there likely to be a broad-based answer to the questions
of how to 1) attribute marketing results
to marketing actions and 2) develop marketing programs that maximize
spending?
The
four ways that I see academics are addressing and can further address these
issues are as follows:
- By investigating an industry:
In the Journal of Direct, Data and
Digital Marketing Practice, Schultz, Block and Ramn have studied consumer
media usage in three product categories, computers, automobiles and fast-food
restaurants. (Schultz, et. al. 2009). In these studies as in other marketing
studies elsewhere, we often see that where the marketer is spending their
dollars (mass advertising) and where the customer is spending their time (social
media) do not match.
- By examining a company: Recently
in the Journal of Marketing (May 2012), Avery, Steenburgh, Deighton and Caravella
investigated data from a high-end retailer to see if introducing a retail store
in specific areas would affect catalogue and online sales.
- By analyzing the customer:
Venkatasen and Kumar (2005) and Venkatasen, Kumar and Ravishanker (2007)
have developed a number of models from
the point of view of the customer to explain and predict the adoption of
multiple channels and discuss financial implications.
- By
analyzing multiple firms (strategy): Neil Morgan in a recent issue of JAMS (2012) outlined
a conceptual framework to link all the different elements of marketing strategy
and business performance, including implementation, which is often overlooked
in research but critical in practice.
Although
these efforts are great first steps toward answering marketing attribution
questions, none of them really provide guidance as to how to attribute the results
of marketing spending on brand advertising, social media, search etc. to
performance. The type of research
conducted to date is a good start, but usually does not focus on the complexities
facing the marketer today in a generalizable way and certainly does not look at
cross-firm differences and performance. So
we as academics have an opportunity not only to apply rigor to these issues but
to work on topics of real relevance to marketers today.
And the question of how to
measure performance in this context is interesting also. Should we look at ROI, or event CLV, as
practitioners do, in hard numbers way?
Wouldn’t customer equity ala Rust and Lemon and Zeithaml (2004) be more
appropriate or at least a metric that should be evaluated in conjunction with
other measures (Stahl, Heitman, Lehmann and Neslin 2012).
