Marketing Analytics
Brand Troko sells cutting-edge denim fabric products to retail clothing companies in the
fashion industry. The marketing research team of Troko has recently carried out a survey
about their brand’s awareness. The 2017 survey showed 66% aided brand awareness,
reflecting moderate brand knowledge that customers possess. To communicate its
differentiated positioning in the global market, Troko was using an ‘only-offline’
communications model with its customers by adopting a variety of offline marketing
instruments such as promotions, exhibitions, and magazine advertising. Then, the
company switched the budget to a mix model, i.e. ‘online-offline’. Thus, Troko’s current
marketing communication vehicles also include display ads and google adwords. In
addition, to engage better with customers, the company has been investing in social
media marketing campaigns.
Anne Watson, the head of the marketing department at Troko, is keen to achieve the
marketing objectives of the company through digital and traditional marketing
communications. After running online and offline advertising campaigns over the last
years, Mrs. Watson obtained a summary of the data pertaining to January 2009 -
September, 2017. The data cover monthly spending ($) information on promotions,
exhibitions, magazines, google adwords, display ads, social media ads as well as visits
to the website of the company, and sales revenues.1
Although very experienced in the sector, Mrs. Watson does not know how to squeeze
the online and offline marketing data out in order to improve their revenues. She recently
hired you as a marketing analytics expert, and looks for simple but powerful insights and
any recommendations you would make.
She seeks answers to the following questions:
1) Can you forecast how much sales revenues we could achieve over the next 6
months, and indicate the uncertainty surrounding the point forecasts?
2) I am a long-term oriented manager and would like to see the immediate (short-
run) and cumulative (long-run) effects of my marketing mix efforts. Can you
please measure both short- and long-run effects for each marketing instrument,
and interpret the results for me? I am keen on translating those effects into the
sales revenues performance, i.e. what drives our performance.
3) I am struggling with how much to spend on my marketing activities. Can you
please analyze whether or not the current resource allocation practice is
appropriate? What would your recommendations be with respect to the optimal
resource allocation for my marketing activities?
1 The dataset and variable definitions can be found in the excel file called ‘Troko_data.xlsx’.
4) Can you please also mention any possible limitations/caveats of your analysis,
if any?
Mrs. Watson wants that you justify your answers by using your expertise in the marketing
analytics area, and that you prepare an executive report covering all the answers to the
above questions.
When preparing the report, please bear in mind that:
- the report should be up to 15 pages.
- R code must be sent as part of your submission.
- any relevant tables and figures must be included in the main part of the report,
as long as they support the arguments.
- Mrs. Watson is not an expert in advanced mathematics, statistics or
econometrics. Please try to emphasize the intuition that can be developed
based on the technical output.
- table of contents, reference list and appendix do not count against the page
limit.
Assessment criteria:
Q1. 30%
Q2. 30%
Q3. 30%
The report structure and Q4 will add 10%.
Good Luck!