The Essentials of Marketing Analytics: Teaching, Research and Practice—An Abstract

Marketing analytics encompasses data, statistics, mathematics and technology. In combination, these components facilitate decision making. We are witnessing companies across industries adopt marketing analytics to improve and expand decision making capabilities. Using marketing analytics is now within reach for most companies since advanced techniques and technologies have increased accessibility. Analytics applications are now becoming infused in everyday tasks. Marketing will continue to fundamentally change over the next few years as we witness increased digital and mobile infusion. As analytics techniques and technology advance, job opportunities and skills will see demand skyrocket. As a result, marketing education must move to embed analytics using active learning techniques into existing courses and introduce students to emerging skills. The result will be a cohesively structured hands-on pedagogical framework which can focus on understanding domain elements when applied to business problems. Aligning analytics and domain knowledge will generate work-ready marketing analysts. Although teaching marketing analytics is crucial in producing work-ready graduates, research is also critical. Unfortunately, the inter-disciplinary lens required to accurately explore the interaction between marketing analytics and society is underdeveloped. As dependence in practice intensifies, industry and academic journals are increasingly searching for valid sources of information on marketing analytics. The objective of this panel session is to discuss the transformation occurring in both academia and practice as a result of big data and data analytics. We will explore how marketing education and research can support the needs of practitioners. The panel will introduce curriculum and research ideas, as well as identify technologies and techniques most often used by practitioners. The panel session will include an introduction to marketing analytics, panel member insights for designing and implementing a marketing analytics curriculum, strategies for advancing research, followed by audience Q&A.