News Releases

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 3, 2015 - Marketing managers traditionally segment customers by three summary measures: recency – how long since their last visit, frequency – how often they visit, and monetary value – how much they spend on a visit (also known as the RFM model).   An upcoming Marketing Science paper by Yao Zhang, Eric Bradlow and Dylan Small shows that in contrast to this traditional segmentation, one based on “binge consumption” is worth more in the long run. Binge consumption is characterized by bursts of heavy buying interspersed by little or no buying. The authors call this pattern of consumption “clumpiness.”

CATONSVILLE, MD, January 31, 2015 – Retailers selling home appliances and electronics goods typically make 15-20 percent profit from these products but realize more than 200 percent profit from selling extended warranties for these products. A new study that appears in the January issue of Marketing Science, a publication of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), finds that even though selling warranties through independent firms will lower extended warranty prices, the consumers may actually be worse off.

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 23, 2016 – Students searching for the right analytics graduate program, business people seeking to hire analytics talent, analytics professors developing syllabi, and deans developing analytics programs have all shared one common challenge – a lack of a unified and comprehensive way to find data sets and problems and research the rapid changes, offerings, and opportunities in analytics education. Until now.

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 10, 2016 – What do irritable, squished riders on a crowded subway train do? According to a forthcoming study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, they often immerse themselves in their mobile phones to escape the crowd, and that they shop and buy more in response to mobile ads in the crowded train.

CATONSVILLE, MD, December 21, 2015 – Small price differences at the point of purchase can be highly effective in shifting consumer demand from high calorie to healthier low calorie alternatives, according to a study in the Articles in Advance section of  Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

CATONSVILLE, MD, November 17, 2015 – Researchers have found a privacy-friendly way to connect the same and similar mobile users based on examining location visitation data, thus allowing e-marketers to target the smart phones and mobile devices of the same person and of those with related interests. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, October 28, 2015 – Increasing cigarette exercise taxes may have the unintended consequence of encouraging consumers to seek higher nicotine content and more dangerous cigarette products, according to a study published in Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). 

PHILADELPHIA, PA, October 27, 2015 – How can electronic health records help doctors make better medical decisions? What new analytics tools will help physicians flag patients at risk of cancer? What do text analytics predict about an expectant mother’s labor?

CATONSVILLE, MD, October 19, 2015 - The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the leading professional association in analytics and operations research, today announced it is launching a new initiative -- Pro Bono Analytics – in an effort to connect analytics experts with non-profit organizations seeking to improve how they achieve greater results by leveraging data and information.

PHILADELPHIA, PA, October 15, 2015 – How can higher education leverage analytics to enhance outcomes for both students and college/university operations? A panel of four Philadelphia area university presidents will tackle this and other questions related to how universities can utilize new techniques in Big Data and math modeling to respond to student debt, globalization, and other problems.