Marketing Analytics: Dr. Manuel Hermosilla’s insights on the power of data

Born and raised in Chile, Dr. Manuel Hermosilla earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. In 2008, he moved to the United States to earn his Ph.D. in Quantitative Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Before joining the University of Illinois (UIC) as an Associate Professor of Marketing in 2023, he taught at Johns Hopkins University.

As an applied microeconomist with expertise in healthcare and business analytics, Dr. Hermosilla’s research explores the complexities of consumer behavior. His work has been published in leading academic journals and has been featured in national and international media outlets like the New York Times.

Dr. Hermosilla developed the online Master of Science in Marketing program’s MKTG 562: Marketing Analytics course where he equips students with essential data literacy skills. His pragmatic approach to teaching emphasizes the importance of avoiding common pitfalls in data analysis and fostering an understanding of data structures and analytical techniques prevalent in modern businesses.

Learn more about Dr. Hermosilla’s expertise and explore the importance of data literacy for modern marketers.

How did you become interested in marketing? What keeps you excited about it?

Coming from economics, I saw a lot of connecting tissue with marketing. I also saw marketing much more in tune with the realities of the modern marketplace. For instance, economists were slow to recognize the significance of pricing strategies like using price endings such as .99, however, this has been a well-established practice in marketing for over 25 years. This delay in recognizing certain market phenomena often leads to a lag in understanding emerging trends driven by subtle nuances in consumer choice. These nuances are integral to economic decision-making. Marketing has an edge there, and I’ve continued to embrace that view all these years.

How did you approach the development of the online MS in Marketing course, MKTG 562: Marketing Analytics?

I’ve been teaching analytics for several years now, and I’ve gained a good amount of experience and insight into the needs and objectives of MS in Marketing students. My aim is to adopt a pragmatic stance, focusing on equipping students with essential skill sets, particularly centered around understanding common data structures and analytical techniques prevalent in modern businesses. This involves exploring data sourced from various transactions, web interactions, and consumer behaviors, and guiding students in analyzing this data to inform decision-making processes effectively. My goal is to empower students with a comprehensive skill set and solid data literacy.

Can you elaborate on the significance of analytics for marketers?

For a long time, marketing decisions were made under the HiPPO paradigm, which is an acronym for the highest paid person’s opinion or the highest paid person in the office. There were so few quantitative arguments behind why a marketing decision should be made, and what often ended up breaking the tie between options A and B was the opinion of the highest paid individual. With the proliferation of data and analytical tools, these decisions have become a lot more scientific and a lot more democratic.

Today, every business is collecting organic data. It’s crucial for marketers to possess literacy in various domains and to be adept at predictive analysis, forecasting, handling heterogeneity, conducting experiments, mastering machine learning, and so on. Modern marketing professionals will oversee decisions that operate at a mass scale for a large portfolio of potential customers. It’s important that they can put numbers behind their marketing strategy.

What is the most important thing you have learned about having a successful career that you would like to pass on to marketing students?

Empathy with your audience is important. A mistake that I’ve certainly made many times, and that I see a lot of people making, is that they overemphasize the role of “under the hood analytics” in terms of communication. Rigorous analyses are very important, but the crucially important skill is how you convey your insights. Questions to ask are:

• What does my audience need to learn from my presentation?
• How do I keep my audience engaged?
• What are the questions that they will have, both explicit and implicit, and how am I addressing them?
• What are they concerned about, and what would make them doubt the results?
• Are my conclusions really giving them something actionable or reproducible, or something that just excites them?

Tell us about the most exciting project you are working on right now.

I work at the interface of combining my marketing expertise and background with my interest in healthcare and pharmaceuticals. I’m currently working on a project that merges behavioral hypotheses with insights from psychology and behavioral economics, focusing on enduring disparities in behavior between genders. For instance, women typically exhibit lower risk-taking tendencies, greater empathy, and heightened altruism compared to men. I’ve applied these hypotheses to clinical trials, experiments testing the safety and efficacy of new medical interventions. My hypothesis suggests that trials run by female principal investigators tend to be safer compared to those run by males, with evidence supporting this claim. This project is currently undergoing the publication process.