STATISTICS FOR MARKETING

The course is one of the formative activities related to or integrated into the Master's degree program in Marketing Management. It enables students to acquire knowledge and understanding of some key statistical concepts and their application in marketing activities and market-related issues. The objective of the course is to provide students with multivariate statistical analysis methods to visualize, extract, and interpret information from surveys or business databases, with the goal of planning strategies that support and enhance the marketing decision-making process.

By the end of the course, students should have acquired the skills to develop a critical, personal, and rigorous analysis of marketing phenomena using appropriate statistical tools and methods. Additionally, they should be able to effectively communicate the results obtained and the proposed strategies derived from the developed models.
In particular, students should have acquired the following:
1. Knowledge and Understanding
-Understand the terminology and basic concepts of statistics in the analysis of marketing phenomena;
-Develop the ability to collect, synthesize, and interpret qualitative and quantitative data;
-Acquire knowledge of key multivariate statistical techniques, such as principal component analysis and cluster analysis, for managing marketing phenomena.
2. Ability to Apply Knowledge and Understanding
-Conduct customer base analysis using basic statistical models;
-Understand the key aspects of the performed analyses;
-Identify the most suitable models for multivariate analysis of the studied phenomena;
-Perform market segmentation.
3. Critical Thinking Skills
-Assess and justify under which assumptions the conducted analyses are valid;
-Evaluate the quality of the obtained models by comparing different market segmentation techniques.
4. Communication Skills
-Present, discuss, and validate insights extracted from the analysis of marketing phenomena;
-Effectively articulate and justify the proposed strategies.

To successfully engage with the course material, students need a basic understanding of descriptive statistics and statistical inference methods. For reference, see chapters 1-12 of the book: Illowsky, D., Dean, S. (2022) Introductory Statistics, OpenStax (available for free download at this link https://openstax.org/details/books/introductory-statistics?Book%20details ).

During the course, the following topics will be explored in depth:
1. Market research
2. Sample surveys and data collection
3. Data matrix and preliminary analyses
4. Multivariate regression model
5. Multidimensional analysis techniques and market segmentation

Lecture notes, slides, data, and all other necessary materials for following the course and achieving the expected learning outcomes are available on the e-learning platform moodle.unive.it.

Reference texts:

STATISTICA AZIENDALE (2009)
Bruno Brancalente – Massimo Cossignani – Anna Mulas
McGraw-Hill
Cap. 1.1; 1.5; 2.1; 2.3; 2.5; 3; 4; 5.1; 5.2

STATISTICA PER LE ANALISI DI MERCATO (2022)
Francesca Bassi – Salvatore Ingrassia
Pearson
Cap. 1; 2.1; 3; 4; 5; 6; 8; 10.1; 10.2; 10.3

The final exam consists of a written test lasting approximately 1.5 hours, divided into two parts.
Specifically, the exam aims to assess whether the student has acquired the fundamental concepts presented during the lectures and can integrate this knowledge with the ability to solve practical problems.
The first part includes five multiple-choice questions. Each correct answer will be awarded 2 points.
The second part consists of four exercises, which must be solved using the statistical tools introduced during the course. Each exercise will be graded between 0 and 5 points.
The total maximum score available is 32 points.

written

The final exam consists of a written test divided into two parts.
The first part includes five multiple-choice questions. Each correct answer will be awarded 2 points.
The second part consists of four exercises, which must be solved using the statistical tools introduced during the course. Each exercise will be graded between 0 and 5 points.
The total maximum score available is 32 points.

The course includes fifteen lessons in which the methods described will be introduced and discussed and illustrated with marketing examples.