The end of the gut feeling

Steve Ogden-Barnes is an industry fellow of Graduate School of Business at Deakin University. He will be co-presenting on a pnale with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Pitney Bowes Software and AudioClinic.

RB: Briefly (in one or two points) explain what you'll be speaking about at the Conference?
SOB: I’ll be MCing and also taking part in a panel discussion relating to a white paper recently co-authored with Piitney Bowes Software on marketing decision making

RB: Why do you believe this/these topic(s) are important and relevant to retailers?
SOB: Marketing is still in many ways a ‘gut feel’ game, especially for smaller or emergent retailers who may lack marketing expertise or be overwhelmed by the vast data sources available and the complex marketing choices available. Using selective multi-source data in intelligent ways can be a great start point to identify, locate, understand and track your best potential customers, and signal a paradigm shift towards evidence-based marketing decision making.

RB: Can you provide comment about the current state of the Australian retail sector and ONE tip you'd give to retailers.
SOB: It’s a challenging climate for a number of reasons: economy, e-commerce and evolution. The best piece of advice is to put 5 years between you and your competitors by doing something crazily inventive.