June 28, 2017

Philadelphia, PA: The Aresty Institute of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has launched a new Customer Analytics program to help companies gain a deeper understanding of their data by deploying specific collection methodologies and uncovering patterns for predictive behavior. Fueled with the world-renowned research and thought leadership of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative (WCAI), this powerful program will help companies apply real-world customer analytics currently used by top firms, and develop data-driven recommendations to move their organization forward.

Research finds that organizations that leverage customer behavioral insights outperform peers by 85 percent in sales growth and more than 25 percent in gross margin. A McKinsey survey of more than 700 organizations worldwide found that spending on analytics to gain competitive intelligence generated operating-profit increases in the 6 percent range.

“Customers form the epicenter of what makes firms tick,” says Wharton Associate Professor of Marketing Raghuram Iyengar.

Noting the explosion in data about customers through geo-targeting, social media and other methods, Iyengar explains how Wharton’s program explores the best ways to extract and act on data about customers — from forecasting customer lifetime value to determining the best ways to price, target and advertise products to those customers.

Customer Analytics brings together a powerhouse of Wharton faculty from Operations, Information and Decisions; Legal Studies and Business Ethics; Marketing, and Statistics. Among the faculty teaching in the program are Wharton Marketing Professors Eric T. Bradlow and Peter S. Fader.

Bradlow is chairman of Wharton’s Marketing Department and also the faculty director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative (WCAI), the world’s preeminent academic research center focusing on the development and application of customer analytics methods. Fader, an expert in customer centricity and behavioral data, is the former co-faculty director of WCAI and is currently the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor, Professor of Marketing at Wharton.

“A key differentiator of Wharton’s Customer Analytics program is our relationship with WCAI,” says Iyengar, noting that WCAI marketing faculty bring deep connections with different industries in solving customer analytics problems.

“One of the highlights of Customer Analytics is a live case — this is a real company facing real problems,” Iyengar says.

Participants will take their program learnings to evaluate different problems the company faces. At the end of the program, they will make specific recommendations to the company, and Wharton will evaluate those recommendations based on feedback from company representatives. Throughout the program, participants will have the opportunity to:

  • Understand new and best-practice methods used to collect data
  • Gain new insight on current customer behavior
  • Master the appropriate tools for predicting future customer behavior
  • Employ real-world customer analytics utilized at top firms
  • Formulate data-driven recommendations to inform the strategic business decisions that lead companies toward success

The program targets C-suite decision makers who work directly or indirectly with customers, and those who work in or lead teams in customer analytics.

Session topics include:

  • The Future of Marketing Science: Big Data, New Data, Better Science
  • Customer-Value Analysis
  • Digital Analytics
  • Predictive and Prescriptive Analysis
  • Business Experiments
  • Text Analytics: Drawing Meaning from Unstructured Data
  • Smart Pricing in the Age of Big Data
  • Big Data, Big Responsibilities

For more information about this program, including dates, visit Wharton Customer Analytics.

About the Wharton School

Founded in 1881 as the world’s first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is shaping the future of business by incubating ideas, driving insights, and creating leaders who change the world. With a faculty of more than 235 renowned professors, Wharton has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students. Each year 100,000 professionals from around the world advance their careers through Wharton Executive Education’s individual, company-customized, and online programs, and thousands of pre-collegiate students explore business concepts through Wharton’s www.wharton.upenn.edu.

Media Contact

Sarah Schwab
Director of Marketing Communications
Aresty Institute of Executive Education
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania execed-pr@wharton.upenn.edu