Dr. V. Kumar: Marketing Research and the Data Revolution
A History of Marketing / Episode 8“Anytime there was a budget cut, marketing was cut first. So I took it personally to make executives believe marketing is an investment, not an expense. The only way you can prove that is to show the ROI of marketing.” - V. KumarThis week, we have a marketing titan joining us: Dr. V. Kumar, also known as “VK.” He's among the most cited and influential scholars in the field of marketing. He has published over 300 scholarly articles and 35 books. VK’s has been recognized with over 20 Lifetime Achievement Awards, including being inducted into the Analytics Hall of Fame and being named a Marketing Legend as part of the "Legends in Marketing" series, alongside the Philip Kotler and Jag Sheth. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marketing and is the Goodman Academic-Industry Partnership Professor, Goodman School of Business, Brock University.In our conversation, we trace VK's journey from his engineering roots to how a talk by Philip Kotler sparked his passion for marketing.We also dive deep into the evolution of marketing research and analytics, from surveys and diaries to scanner panel data and the rise of database marketing and CRM. VK shares a behind-the-scenes look at his work measuring the Customer Lifetime Value of Coca-Cola consumers, revealing insights about Coke vs. Pepsi.Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube PodcastsWe'll also explore VK’s paper, "Evolution of Marketing as a Discipline," charting how marketing organizations have adapted, using Coca-Cola as a case study.Finally, we'll discuss the relationship between marketing academia and practice, highlighting VK's extensive collaborations with companies like UPS, IBM, P&G, Comcast, Home Depot, Wells Fargo, and Pitney Bowes, and how this work has helped demonstrate marketing's value as an investment, not just an expense.Now here it is, my conversation with V. Kumar.Early Influences: Philip Kotler and the Journey into MarketingAndrew Mitrak: Welcome, Dr. Kumar. It's an honor to have you here.Dr. V. Kumar (VK): My pleasure, Andrew. Thank you.Andrew: So, before we get into some of marketing's history with you, I wanted to talk about your history. Before you were a marketer, you studied at the Indian Institute of Technology, and you earned your master's in engineering and industrial management. So, I'm curious, how did you make the jump from engineering into marketing?VK: Both my undergraduate bachelor's in technology as well as my master's were from IIT. In the master's program, there was a segue. I majored in industrial engineering and industrial management, whereby we still continued with some engineering classes, but predominantly focused on the management of the engineering function. That was the time that Phil Kotler had come to India to give a few talks and meet with a few people. And I was blown away by the influence of him in the business field in general, particularly in marketing.And so, I started reading about what it is, and it was his textbook that we used in marketing in the master's program. So, when he came, and as well as I heard his talk, and I followed his book, I said marketing is what I'm going to do. And I reached out to him and he said to join Northwestern, but then I chose the University of Texas at Austin because they gave me a full scholarship, and it's a warmer place. I grew up in Southern India, Chennai, and, Texas being warm, it was a natural liking for me to join the University of Texas at Austin. There, I did both marketing and a minor in statistics. So, I brought in the engineering expertise throughout my life, even majoring as a minor in statistics. That's the segue that happened.Andrew: So, you came to the US to start studying marketing. What were your initial impressions of marketing as a consumer, versus an academic? Were there advertisements that made an impression on you when you were young? Were there specific brands or examples that stood out to you?VK: The first thing is, when you land in the US and start watching television, you see a plethora of advertisements. You get glued to that as to how colorful it is, how beautiful it is, and what the message is. We have this AIDA model: awareness, interest, desire, and action. So, I used to evaluate each of these ads as to where they stop. Are they just creating awareness, or are they going through the process till the end to make me go and buy that product?So, that was very fascinating. But the one ad growing up that really caught my attention, which for many people and the whole ad world talks about it, is the renaissance of advertising, the Apple 1984 Macintosh ad in the Super Bowl. That transformed Super Bowl ads from then on, and also the ad industry in terms of how to be creative and catch the attention of the consumers. So, that was there. Then after that, a series of Coke ads and Budweiser ads all followed through, but this was like a moment to reflect, and that still stands in the mind.Andrew: Yes, I think we can all envision that ad, almost frame for frame in our heads. It made quite an impression.VK: Definitely.Andrew: And so, you mentioned Philip Kotler, of course. Who were some of the other individuals that first shaped your understanding of marketing as you were first entering the field?VK: So, I was admitted to the University of Texas at Austin, and my advisor throughout my stay was Bob Leon, Professor Bob Leon. He was a significant influence then, and till now. He's the best friend, he's the mentor, guide, everything. So, he prepared me for life saying that there's only one thing you need to remember. You just put in your hard work, and if the expected outcome doesn't come, don't give up the hard work, keep persisting, putting it in.That was great advice because as an academic professional, you would see that when we submit manuscripts, rejection is the norm. So, every paper we write, we keep rejecting it. So, we cannot give up. So, he prepared me well. And then also in terms of quantitative marketing, he is a great quantitative marketer. So, he taught me some of the basic statistical techniques as well as advanced. I was his research assistant.But I was the one who was fortunate upon graduation, and then even before I got promoted to associate in the '90s, Dave Aaker and George Day adopted me and said, "V. K., we want to write this marketing research book with you. We have done something so far, but we want you to take over from here."I was like, is this a dream? And then I took it over and wrote the book, as the fourth edition or so was the first one that we co-authored together. And now, it's the 13th edition, and we'll release the 14th edition very soon. It is the standard. And then in the middle, somewhere, Jag Sheth also influenced me significantly, adopted me and said that the work that you do, make sure you also give back.You know, I was adopted by many people at different stages. So, what do I do? And now, fast forward to today, I've had 40 doctoral students I could mentor. And it was the most rewarding experience I have seen, and probably one of the largest numbers among the academics, to mentor, and they are all doing very well in the academic field. Most of them in the academic field, some in the practitioner world. They keep switching back and forth.The Evolution of Marketing Research: From Surveys to Scanner Data and BeyondAndrew: You've clearly taken these early lessons of hard work to heart because you've had a very prolific career. Of course, you've contributed to virtually every field of marketing in some capacity, but one area that stands out is marketing research, and you mentioned the book, Marketing Research, which is now in its 13th edition and the 14th edition's on its way. Can we dive into marketing research as a category? What was the evolution of marketing research, and how did it change and what was your role in shaping it?VK: This is a great point to reflect. So, when I came to the US in the '80s, we had one of the companies of marketing research was Marketing Research Corporation of America, MRCA. And they, prior to them, marketing research was survey research. Semore Sudman who was the pioneer of survey sampling and how to sample correctly and do the survey. So, surveys were the most common thing.From there, the evolution came with MRCA into giving diaries to people. You write what you buy and then mail the diaries on a weekly basis so that they don't forget. In the survey, there could be telescopic bias. I forgot what I bought, and so there could be errors, so diaries minimize those errors. And then, from there, we had A.C. Nielsen and IRI Information Resources Inc. introducing the scanner data, scanner panel data in the '80s, in a few test market cities. Port Washington was one of them.And one of my first jobs was after graduating, although it was short-lived, I was at the University of Iowa, and I joined there because the co-founder of IRI, Information Resources Inc, Jerry Eskin, was a marketing professor at the University of Iowa. He said, "If you join, I'll give you all the scanner panel data. You can build the models, whatever you want, and we will share it with the companies."I did that. He took me from Iowa City to Chicago over the weekends. We got a lot of data, built a lot of models for P&G and Kimberly Clark and published them in Journal of Marketing Research and JMR subsequently. But that is the revolution, from survey research to diary panel to scanner panel data. Then the revolution came in the '90s of database marketing, that we could really have databases of customers. The scanner panel is one part, the retailers collect, but also, manufacturers also started collecting data, buying data from the retailers, as well as with the credit card, they were also registering us. The loyalty programs emerged in a big way.So, they had not only what you buy, but who you are, and also through the models, we were able to generate why you are buying. So, that part came in the database marketing, and then, of course, the birth of 2000, the CRM came into the revolution, that is, which customer is buying what. So, what should I be showcasing to this customer in terms of ads, in terms of customization and personalization, that was the goal, but the goal was materialized later on in the 2011 to 2020 time period.And today, with the advent of new-age technologies, we are able to easily do that, the personalization, customization. But the question is, is every company venturing into this path or are some of them lagging behind? Still, if you take P&G, the majority of their products are all mass marketing. They are in many categories and multiple brands all over the world, and it's mass marketing. World of Coke, the same thing, Coca-Cola is mass marketing.Unlocking Customer Lifetime Value: Insights from the Coca-Cola Case StudyVK: Having said that, even Coke came to us and said, "can you tell me what is the lifetime value of a Coke consumer?" You know, never thought of it, because to measure the lifetime value, you need customer transaction data, exactly what it is, but then, who tracks it? A.C. Nielsen tracks how much you buy over a weekly period, but also the competition. So, we had to come up with a very new model. Me and one of my former doctoral students, Saran Sundar, we came up with measuring CLV of Coke, Pepsi, all soft beverages and published in JMR, which won the best research in JMR and the Donald Lehmann award as well as the best doctoral dissertation award for my doctoral student.So, this marketing research is the one that you can clearly see the barriers and then how we overcome these barriers.Andrew: Can we dive into that Coca-Cola example, just in a little more detail, because this is far before the age of really digital advertising as we know it today, as well. So, how did you approach that?VK: The data comes from A.C. Nielsen scanner panel. So, they had 20,000 people in the panel. They track over a six to seven year period as to, you know, what soft drinks that they buy. And so, we have like, if Andrew bought Coke in week two, three, four, and then switched to Pepsi in week seven, eight, then came back to Coke. So, we have all these switching as well as sticking to the brand.And some people are variety seekers, some people are die-hard brand loyal, some people are promotion sensitive, we call them deal-prone customers, and some customers are rational customers. They look for a coupon, cut the coupon, and go to the store and take it. So, we look at the buying pattern of a Coke, and then among these 20,000 panel members, you have a wide range of age.Then you segment also by, if you're a 20-year-old versus a 30, 40, 50, 60, how is the consumption pattern varying? And in this process of this data, we use something called a structural model. People often confuse with structural equation model. No, this is structural model, which facilitates what is the utility for consuming Coke at this instant by an individual. And so, we model the functional utility, and then see that at what time interval, because they buy and how often they switch.And if you can model this steadily, in the observation period, then you can project it across age group, so that what will be the lifetime value of Coke. The interesting thing in the study is, if I ask you this question, which would Pepsi have a higher customer lifetime value, or Coke will have a higher customer lifetime value?Andrew: My best guess would be Coca-Cola.VK: If you look at how much as a consumer, a Pepsi consumer consumes more Pepsi than a Coke consumer is consuming more Coke. So, the customer lifetime value was higher for Pepsi. But the overall consumption and profitability and the share was higher for Coke.Andrew: Right.VK: So, after this study, the plan was how to increase the customer lifetime value of Coke. How can we make a customer drink more Coke?And one of the ways that you do that is to introduce a lot of variations, of Coke, diet Coke, caffeine-free, zero, cherry Coke, zero, Coke, and all those things. So, that's the way you keep them in the family. So, overall, if you look at the family structure, then Coke manages that very well.The Evolution of Marketing as a DisciplineAndrew: I want to turn attention to a paper you published called "Evolution of Marketing as a Discipline." This is a long, dense paper, but if you were to take the 30,000 foot high-level view of marketing, say over the last hundred years or so, how would you describe its evolution from the highest level?VK: So, if you go back to 1936, and then, I will go like a decade, one decade, marketing was viewed as applied economics. Then from there, it became marketing as a managerial activity. And then the third decade, it became marketing as a quantitative science. Then after this, something happened that we started looking at consumer behavior. It became a behavioral science.And then how do they make decisions? And so, decision science followed. And then after decision science, it became an integrative science. And this is a very interesting period that integrative science between 1986 and 1995. Why? Because we borrowed a lot of theories from psychology, sociology, anthropology, to better understand the consumer's behavior. Why do they behave in a certain way?We were able to explain much better. So, and also the economics field was always infused, but then, statistics became very dominant. Prior to that period, prior to 1996, most of the research done, when you have multiple customers data on buying behavior, you would just run a regression model and get one coefficient for price, across all customers.And what is the assumption behind it? Is basically saying that every Andrew or V. K. or Phil Kotler or Jag Sheth, they all have the same price elasticity. But you and I know that's not true. So, in the mid '90s, where prominent modeling, unobserved heterogeneity, that's a technical term, in layman's term, all that means is that there are groups of customers who behave similarly.And so, all these latent class segmentation became so prominent, how to model that at the segment level, and at the individual level, we have advances in statistical models, through random effects model. So, we were able to really understand each customer at the individual level, what is their elasticity. And then market to them. So, that was a revolutionary period as to why my elasticity is different from yours. That's because maybe I belong to some socioeconomic class different from yours, or my lifestyle is very different from yours. So, we were able to explain all those things with the borrowed theories from psychology, social psychology, and sociology.Then marketing became a scarce resource, like people anytime there is a budget cut, marketing was cut first. The notion was that it's an expense. And so, I took it personally from 1999, 2000 onwards, for the last 24 years, to make executives believe marketing is an investment, not an expense. But how do we prove that? The only way you can prove that is to show the ROI of marketing expense. Whenever anybody invests, so, I invested, I give you $30 million, the CEO might tell the CMO, "Show me the return."So, when you do mass marketing, the famous saying, "Half of it goes wasted," I don't know which one. So, but when you do it individual-level marketing, who's buying, who's not buying, based on the marketing that you're doing, we are able to directly link the spend to the outcome. And so, that is what we did from 2000 onwards to measure the birth of customer lifetime value, came in terms of measurement, concept, definition, and implementation.IBM and Wells Fargo were the two companies that were the initial companies that we started working with. And then, I had students from Europe, so they also, roped in a Spiegel catalog company, and then, through marketing science Institute here, we got many member companies of marketing Science Institute, also share data and built a lot of models, fast forward today over 150 companies, implemented some of the models we have done, and they're all showcased as either practice price in inform society, and they're also available as practice price videos on my website.So, that is the investment part of it. To complete the story of this evolution, then, marketing became an integral part of the organization, that no decision can be made in isolation. They have to be even if it's an information systems or finance or operations, we'd say how we are going to market it, if you're going to change the operations.Example, rather than delivering the product from warehouse, you are now going to deliver it directly through mail. So, how will you market it? Because there could be a lot of delays in the mail system. So, what do you do? Or the vice versa from mail to warehouse, what can you do that? A famous example is Amazon also touted two-hour delivery window, but that didn't go far because that was impossible to implement.So, marketing promise has to collaborate with the operations. And then, in the late part of 2015 to 2020, we had the engagement marketing, and today, we are standing as transformative marketing.How Marketing Organizations EvolveAndrew: I want to come back to this early period, though. You started by citing the year 1936, and at the time, it was a field of applied economics, and you went from there to today. I'm curious how this would have impacted, say, a marketing organization. Take a company like Coca-Cola or Proctor & Gamble, or a company that existed from 1936 to the present. How did their marketing organization develop? What are the key changes or milestones? If I was a CMO and I was hiring a team, what did my team look like in 1936, and then what does it look like today, or what are the major changes in between?VK: This question is the right question because just four days ago, I was at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, seeing the evolution of ads that they showed in the 15 minutes cinema that they screened.You know, that is one part. Just the evolution of Coke itself, the product formulation pretty much remained the same, in terms of selling it, they were in a situation where the more bottling plants, the more places they were present, they could sell more. So, the distribution era was the 1920s, '30s, '40s, and all, '50s. So, as they increased the distribution, then became the product era. So, they had variations of the product. Then they had like Fanta, Coca-Cola, Sprite, and a few other lime-based drinks all started evolving, the product era. Then the selling era, then they had competition.So, the salesperson went and said that why should they go through the selling era. But the commercials, if you look at it in parallel with this, they were showing colorful ads, colorful people, good-looking, attractive, and all those things they were showcasing that. Two benefits-based advertising in the '70s and '80s. That was a good shift that they followed through. Like what is the benefit of drinking Coca-Cola?And how often you should drink, and when you should drink, occasion-based drinking. So, all these expanded the scope for Coca-Cola in terms of advertising. And then with us tag teaming with A.C. Nielsen and IRI, using the scanner panel data, they found out which type of customers are buying more and less over as they age through, is the consumption dropping or increasing? And we find the consumption dropping.It's maximum when you're a teenager, 20s and 30s, and then it drops. So, what can we offer as a substitute drink to keep them in the family at that age, then they brought all these SmartWater and tonic water, all these water-based things came about. So, they were very clever in keeping a member of the household within the Coke family, Coca-Cola family with this understanding.And today, the biggest talk is about the AI-generated Coca-Cola advertisement, all over the world that we are seeing. And die-hard Coca-Cola fans, love it and saying that, oh, what, how colorful it is. And the critics are saying, "Oh, they've gotten down to this low level of using AI, they don't want to spend money, just AI." But if you focus on the ad itself, it is just combining the benefits, the occasions, and people all over the world.They are one company that throughout from 1896 have steadily done very well.Andrew: Yeah, it's such an iconic brand, of course, but you were mentioning how you tie it to a time. And we're entering, at the time of we're recording, we're starting to enter the Christmas time, and they're a brand that somehow is associated with things like Santa Claus and polar bears, but then their classic "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" ad, it's very summery, and it's part of the hippie movement. I'm sure that that was controversial to some extent at the time. And now, they are doing it again with AI.VK: But that's the objective, Andrew. That is everybody is talking about it. Good or bad, the awareness and what it is. So, it makes people curious to go and see.From Mass Marketing to PersonalizationAndrew: Another paper you wrote, along these lines is called "Conceptualizing the Evolution and Future of Advertising." And the paper describes how advertising has evolved from a one-way broadcast to a two-way conversation between brands and consumers. And advertising was focused on selling, but now it's more focused on engaging. And so, stepping back on this, what were some of the major milestones in how advertising has changed over the last century? And if you want to continue with Coca-Cola as an example of how their advertising has changed, that might be a useful framing for us too.VK: Yeah, Coca-Cola is one, but this study was done with Professor Shefali Gupta from India. A lot of thoughts went into this in terms of culturally how it has evolved, in an individualistic culture versus collectivistic culture, like India and China, or Singapore versus Europe versus America, North America, and so on. So, that was the thing. If you look at the traditional way of persuasion, advertising has got three objectives, inform, persuade, and remind.So, every ad focused on measuring it. Did I inform, how many people are aware, how many people intend to buy, and then how many people recollect the ad. So, those three objectives still, they would say that. But what the evolution has seen in advertising is that there was a mass advertising in television or radio, broadcast advertising was all there. Then came this beautiful media convergence, where you could have the confluence of the technology, multiple proliferation of media, and the ability to understand each customer's preferences.So, because of this media conversion, we had this split cable. Meaning like, if I and Andrew are neighbors in a city, in a zip code, we both are watching Jeopardy, and I will be seeing one ad, and you will be seeing another ad. And that was the media convergence, the technology allowed. Because I like to eat, say, Lays chips, or some chips, I don't eat that much chips at all, but some product that I'm eating, or maybe drinking Coca-Cola, the ad would be for Coke, and you consume Pepsi, then the ad would be for Pepsi for you.So, that is the way with the scanner panel data giving insights to the manufacturers and ad agencies that they buy this data, they can customize it.Andrew: So, if I was to go back to our Coca-Cola example, for instance, if I was in 1896 or so, I'm somewhat limited to print, or maybe out of home. And then radio comes along, and television comes along, and as a marketer or as a brand manager, how do these changing technologies change how I'm approaching advertising my products.VK: That's where advertising was always viewed as a creative component. And it was a mass marketing component. So, how can we infuse science into advertising? It is the messaging. So, advertising is nothing but creating a message to the audience, the relevant audience that they are targeting. Now, from mass marketing, general message, creating awareness or either to create an interest in that category, or the product, and to desire the product, I want to consume it, to actually buying it.The general-purpose advertising is to create awareness. So, what is the next step that they can do to induce interest? Then they focus on the benefits of consuming the product, the interest. Then what what can they do to make them consume, go to the desire, this is the one that I want to consume. I'm interested in this category, but I want to consume Coke, desire.So, for that, they'll say, "It is easily available and an attractive price, affordable." Affordability and availability became the message in the advertisements to create the desire. And the action is, there is a store next door to you. So, that is the completion of the circle or the cycle of advertising in terms of what it is. The reason I said circle is it has come back now to the beginning with the new technology again, they do the digital advertising, starting with like, how many people click, so that they become aware of it.Then how many people are now asking for more information, like not only seeing the ad, but clicking it to get additional information. And then, from additional information, what are, where is it available? So, which, so put your zip code and see where all it is available. So, then, you go to the desirability part of it, where affordability and availability is done in the digital world, and finally, you order from your home base. product gets delivered.So, the same cycle has repeated in the digital world, through the click through and conversion rate and so on.Applying Marketing Research to Inform MessagingAndrew: You brought up this relationship between marketing as a creative act, and marketing and advertising as a science. And it feels like there is, of course, a little bit of a natural tension here between being data-driven and being creative, but of course, marketing is, as you mentioned, it's strongest when measurement and creativity work together. And I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how the relationship between data and creativity and marketing has evolved over the years.VK: I can give you, explain this with one very nice example that we did with UPS. What happened there is that they have almost 4 million small businesses that they cater to, shipping packages. And they were communicating with them, sending them messages. So, they know they have to send them messages at some intervals. And the messages they varied are one is a relationship-oriented message, meaning like we can help you grow your business. If we come and spend a day with you, we can customize like what kind of shipping is good for you, for your business to grow. So, they, there's a relationship message.There is another message called economic message, which is, says that if you ship 10 packages, you get 20% discount, or 10 packages, pure economic discount. So, the creative part was done there. That is what what should be the creative economic message, what should be the creative relationship message. Now, the measurement part comes in where, who should get the economic message, who should get the relationship message, that's first question.Then for how long they should be getting that message, and when should it flip back to a relationship to economic. Or, they should bring both to some other group of customers. And that's where using the historical data for each of the 4 million small businesses, what messages they received in the last three, four years, how did they respond to each of those messages?And for how long they were responding. So, we built something called a time-varying parameter model, a dynamic model. Each time they get an ad at different times, the effect of that ad varies over time. We capture that. Using this historical data of measurement, we have the insight which small business should get economic message for how long, and then what should happen after that.We did this for them, and it was implemented very successfully, and we were able to also report. And some of the things that at that time, the CMO was Mr. Kevin Warren, and we also did a Harvard Business Review article of a variation of this, and he came and commented that how CMOs are when they are given strategic discretion, operational discretion, and financial discretion, that they can take decisions like this to move forward, that creativity and accountability or measurement part can go together, and they are very successful.Marketing Academia and Practice: Building a BridgeAndrew: Through this interview, you've cited several examples of how your academic research has closely collaborated with businesses. You mentioned Proctor & Gamble, you just mentioned UPS, Coca-Cola. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how the relationship between marketing as an area of academics and scholarship and research has collaborated with marketing practitioners and CMOs. How has that relationship evolved over your career? And do you think that relationship could be even tighter than it is today?VK: Yeah, this is something very close to my heart. As I said to you, around about 2000, around that time period, marketing was relegated as an expense, it's not an investment. So, we went on a crusade, me and my team of doctoral students over the next 20 years to prove marketing is an investment. And we have done that. So, there is an organization called MASB, Marketing Accountability Standards Board, like FASB, MASB, which the focus of that board is to show marketing as an investment. We were all founding members, founding directors, and we did that.Now, what happened simultaneously at that time, because marketing was not able to prove its worth, CMOs were the most frequently fired executives in the organization. Their stint was less than two years, less than 24 months. So, how to reverse this? So, from then on, we took up the role of what should we give to the CMOs as ammunition for them to use?One of the questions that was asked by a company like Pitney Bowes was that if I give $10 million to my marketing CMO, they had, I think, director marketing or so. Should it be spent on building customer relationships, or should it be spent on building the brand?How do you answer that question, like, should you build the brand, or should you build customer relationships? It's like a chicken and egg problem. And so, to answer that, we started this journey of linking brand perception to actual customer lifetime value at the individual level. What Andrew as an individual thinks of Coca-Cola's brand awareness, brand trust, how much emotional attachment he has got, and how much he's willing to pay for that.And if the store next door closes, would, are you willing to go to the next street and buy it, and are you willing to advocate this, are you willing to repeat buy this? So, we came up with eight attributes to link it, and then showcase this branding, all these attributes to customer lifetime value. What you think of the brand today, link it to the customer lifetime value, which is the next three years value that you're likely to give to this brand.So, when we connect all these dots together and work with, here is where we work with the marketing practitioners, give it to them and say, "You have a tool here, and you can showcase to them, if you give me money, I can do both. Build the brand as well as build customer relationship." And that blossomed into working. And then down the line, we did another study which was published in Sloan Management Review as well as Journal of Marketing, is that if a CMO focuses on maximizing customer lifetime value, would that increase the stock price, share price.We did a field experiment with a B2B company and a B2C company, and Wall Street analysts observed it, and we showcased that maximizing CLV, customer lifetime value, results in increasing stock price or the value of the firm.And then Sloan Management Review immediately published this in saying, "This is great news for the marketers, the marketing field." So, that happened. Then, another five years later, we took a 10-year data, longitudinal data to study, help the marketing practitioners that if the marketing practitioners are given what decisions to make strategically, and which markets to enter, and how to enter the foreign markets, like operational discretion, and then how much to spend, doing the financial discretion, if you give strategic operations and financial discretion, then they can show global growth for the companies.So, 10-year data, and that was published in, it was an international study, so Journal of International Business Studies, but most importantly, it was published in Harvard Business Review again, repeatedly. So, everything we do, we get coverage from either Harvard Business Review or Sloan or California Management Review, because they have direct relevance to the practice. So, I feel that the close tie-ups that I have with the marketing field and the marketing practitioners to help them grow, this has worked out magically for us.Learn More and Connect with Dr. V. KumarAndrew: Dr. Kumar, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Your insights have been so valuable. So, thanks for sharing your experiences and your wisdom with us. And for listeners, what's the best way for them to learn more about your work and connect or follow your work online?VK: It's all documented in my website, drvkumar.com, and for all the the engagement work and the customer lifetime value work is all in vkclv.com is all there. But most importantly, they can Google search me and write to me directly. I'm a public figure, like everybody can find me easily.Andrew: Dr. Kumar, thank you so much. It's been so great meeting you on this podcast, and look forward to staying in touch.VK: My pleasure. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketinghistory.org
UK