<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>The explosion of available data has created much excitement among marketing practitioners about their ability to better understand the impact of marketing investments. Big data allows for detecting patterns and often it seems plausible to interpret them as causal. While it is quite obvious that storks do not bring babies, marketing relationships are usually less clear. Apparent “causalities” often fail to hold up under examination. If marketers want to be sure not to walk into a causality trap, they need to conduct field experiments to detect true causal relationships. In the present digital environment, experiments are easier than ever to execute. However, they need to be prepared and interpreted with great care in order to deliver meaningful and genuinely causal results that help improve marketing decisions.</p>
</abstract>

The explosion of available data has created much excitement among marketing practitioners about their ability to better understand the impact of marketing investments. Big data allows for detecting patterns and often it seems plausible to interpret them as causal. While it is quite obvious that storks do not bring babies, marketing relationships are usually less clear. Apparent “causalities” often fail to hold up under examination. If marketers want to be sure not to walk into a causality trap, they need to conduct field experiments to detect true causal relationships. In the present digital environment, experiments are easier than ever to execute. However, they need to be prepared and interpreted with great care in order to deliver meaningful and genuinely causal results that help improve marketing decisions.

On Storks and Babies: Correlation, Causality and Field Experiments

Associate Professor of Marketing, London Business School, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Professor of Management Science, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge,

NIM Marketing Intelligence Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"On Storks and Babies: Correlation, Causality and Field Experiments"}

The explosion of available data has created much excitement among marketing practitioners about their ability to better understand the impact of marketing...

On Storks and Babies: Correlation, Causality and Field Experiments

Published Online: Oct 28, 2016

Page range: 24 - 29

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/gfkmir-2016-0012

Keywords
Correlation, Causality, Field Experiments, Field Tests, Causal Inference

© 2016

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

On Storks and Babies: Correlation, Causality and Field Experiments

Published Online: Oct 28, 2016

Page range: 24 - 29

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/gfkmir-2016-0012

KeywordsCorrelation, Causality, Field Experiments, Field Tests, Causal Inference

© 2016

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
Correlation, Causality, Field Experiments, Field Tests, Causal Inference