Marketing Dynamics: A Primer on Estimation and Control

Marketing Dynamics: A Primer on Estimation and Control provides an introduction to the estimation and control of dynamic marketing models. It introduces dynamic models in discrete- and continuous-time, scalar and multivariate settings, with observed outcomes and unobserved states, as well as random and/or time-varying parameters. It exemplifies how various dynamic models can be cast into the unifying state space framework, the benefit of which is to use one common algorithm to estimate all dynamic models. Marketing Dynamics: A Primer on Estimation and Control then focuses on the estimation part, answering questions about the sales elasticity of advertising, sales lift due to price promotion, and short-term sales forecasting. The estimation relies on two principles - Kalman filtering and the likelihood principle. Next, the primer elucidates the control part answering questions about how much managers should spend on advertising over time and across regions, best promotional timing and depth, and optimally responding to competing brands' actions. The control part relies on the maximum principle and the optimality principle. Finally, the primer presents three examples on the application of optimal control, differential games, and stochastic control theory to marketing problems, and illustrates how to discover novel insights into managerial decision-making.