Why marketing needs marketing science

Colin McDonald and John Scriven

In this article, Colin McDonald and John Scriven make the case for 'marketing science' - the development of empirical marketing generalisations or models - to help develop marketing strategy.

Why marketing needs marketing science

Colin McDonald and John Scriven

In March 2006, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science was inaugurated at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. The institute formalises the collaboration between the university's Marketing Science Centre and the Ehrenberg Centre at London's South Bank University, to carry out fundamental research into the behaviour of consumers and markets. This is funded by leading marketing companies, agencies and others.

The name honours two marketing science pioneers: Andrew Ehrenberg for discovering how consumers buy, Frank Bass for his 'diffusion model', which predicts growth patterns for new products. Both...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands