Head: Professor Glen L. Urban, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group

Associated Faculty:
Prof. Michael Braun, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School, Information Technology Group
Prof. John Hauser, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. John Little, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. Jim Orlin, MIT Sloan School, Operations Research Group
Prof. Gui Liberali, Visiting Scholar, MIT Soan School
Prof. Drazen Prelec, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. Renee Gosling, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. Duncan Simester, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. Glen Urban, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group
Prof. Eric Von Hipple, MIT Sloan School, Management of Technology Group
Prof. Juanjuan Zhang, MIT Sloan School, Marketing Group

Description:
The Internet provides a new platform for enhancing marketing effectiveness and efficiency. The Digital Marketing SIG studies the potential gains from employing digital technologies to the formulation and execution of (real) marketing strategies. Existing and fully funded projects currently include over $600,000 of work per year with GM, Liberty Mutual, and Suruga Bank. We have completed a project at BT to build and evaluate a Customer Advocacy web site for trust based marketing of broadband telecommunication services, and have tested its impact. Suruga Bank is completing a similar project to build a trusted adviser/advocacy system in a virtual Branch Bank. Both BT and Suruga Bank are now researching algorithms to "morph" the site experience to match individual cognitive characteristics – providing gains of over 20%.

The GM projects have looked at Customer Advocacy and market research measures to calibrate the effects of four Trust and Advocacy tools: community, individualized electronic brochures, advisors, and competitive test drives at the dealer level. Two recent GM projects include lexicographical modeling of how people decide which cars to consider for purchase, and then choose those that pass the consideration elimination screening. The second GM project morphs Internet ads based on individual clicks that allow matching of ads to the cognitive style of consumers at their point in the decision-making process. This later project is now complete and enabled over 30% improvement in click thru rates when ads are morphed. Attention is now on the role of apps in reaching Gen Y and how to integrate new media into the marketing strategy.

A new project for Liberty Mutual is examining the role of an app that helps people more efficiently move. We are estimating the effect of the app on trust and consumer willingness to consider Liberty Mutual for homeowners insurance after their move is complete. A project for FT Orange Labs has designed "concierge" app to morph mobile screen layout and ads based on inferences of cognitive style and purpose of a particular interaction with a mobile device. This integrates the temporal variables of location and time into cognitive morphing. A new project this year with Suruga Bank uses fMRI to study trust and determine how site design activates trust areas of the brain. There is interest in new methods of ad targeting, site design, the mix between new and old. The group is very responsive to managerial needs and how they can be filled by methods that advance the state of the art in marketing science with live experimentation and implementation at sponsor sites.