IESE Insight - Marketing

When the product offer isn't clear, change the way people think about it

Romain Boulongne If your potential customers are scratching their heads, consider "priming" them with a goal to accomplish. Goal prompts, along with analogies and prototypes, can help position your products strategically, according to IESE's Romain Boulongne.

Optimizing influencers' influence: which brands to promote where?

Isabelle Engeler; Kate Barasz Whose opinion about running shoes would you trust more? Someone loyal to one brand or someone who mixes and matches up their exercise gear? Research by Isabelle Engeler points to the latter.

What's in a number? Numerical nudging to boost motivation and decision-making

C. Lembregts; Jorge Pena Marin Try expressing your goals in large numbers to help put yourself in the right mindset to achieve them. And to prod customers to make sales decisions, try presenting them with round numbers first and then precise ones close to the point of purchase.

Overconfident? Underconfident? Here's how we tend to miss the mark in predicting performance

Isabelle Engeler; Gerald Häubl Why do most people believe they drive better than average? Are we wrong about our own abilities or about others'? New research uncovers the sources that drive our erroneous performance predictions relative to our peers.

How to design a hybrid sales strategy

Cosimo Chiesa, Íñigo Gallo Iñigo Gallo asks his colleague Cosimo Chiesa about three key building blocks of a hybrid sales strategy -- a strategy that has become a necessity in lockdown times and offers advantages once the current storm has cleared.

Portrait of an ideal CEO to lead after the crisis

Luis Huete, Antonio Nuñez A survey of more than 1,000 CEOs of leading Spanish companies suggests the model of leadership needed for the post-pandemic business world.

The Big Picture: How to flourish in your career

IESE Insight A career path doesn't always advance in a linear or upward fashion. Follow these tips to lay the ground for a career that will blossom over time.

Yes, layoffs are bad for your brand

Vardit Landsman; Stefan Stremersch While many companies are considering or already implementing mass layoffs as a result of the current global economic crisis, research finds the negative impact on a brand can be serious. Time to check in with the marketing department.

Take the iceberg challenge for better segmentation

Jorge González When it comes to market segmentation, key factors for your business may lie beneath the surface. Learn to dive deep and develop a more profound understanding of your customers with the "iceberg challenge" proposed by IESE marketing professor Jorge Gonzalez.

Direct to consumer: How to reach your clients when stores disappear

José Luis Nueno According to José Luis Nueno, mass-market companies have underestimated the power of e-commerce and the direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that are digital natives. By 2025, online commerce will have changed the marketplace irreversibly.