We recently learned of the passing of John D.C. Little, whose foundational work in operations research and decision science set the stage for how organizations harness data for strategic decision-making. His extraordinary legacy dating back to the 1950s includes a…
We announce the publication of the Harvard Business Review digital paper, "GenAI Can Help Companies Do More with Customer Feedback," co-authored by First Analytics co-founders Tom Davenport and Mike Thompson, along with Jim Sterne. This research offers deep insights into…
For the longest time, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies were limited mostly to mass marketing, unable to address consumers directly. That has changed, and with the emergence of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), understanding and predicting consumer behavior is now more…
Retail market or store testing has been a decision tool for many decades. But tests are often not conducted in a manner which produces reliable results. Care must be taken in the selection of test and control groups in making…
The title of the post was created by ChatGPT 4.0, a Generative AI Large Language Model (LLM) . In fact, it wrote most of this post. Recent (August 2023) articles, such as "America's biggest brands rethink price hikes in disinflation…
After many months of angst about rapidly rising commodity prices, indications are that they are coming back down. This presents an opportunity for a data-driven business that uses advanced analytics. Though there is pain in operating a supply chain under…
A quote attributed to Winston Churchill, perhaps incorrectly, "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." In this day of social media and instant communications this is even more true. …
An article in the Economist warns that, "a cabal of AI-enhanced price-bots might plausibly hatch a method of colluding that even their handlers could not understand, let alone be held responsible for." The article describes a situation in Martha's Vineyard…
'Tis the season of the mileage run. Some frequent fliers find themselves just short of qualifying for a particular elite status tier in an airline loyalty program for next year. In order to secure status, some will book cost-effective flights…
The sharing of techniques and methodologies across industries can produce advances in successful applications, not only for the practice of analytics as a whole, but for individual firms. Practitioners in the areas of marketing and supply chain analytics, for example,…