Conference to Showcase New Insights into Understanding and Engaging Customers

New Haven, Conn., April 22, 2010 – Marketing executives and researchers will discuss the latest ideas in consumer behavior and marketing strategy at the 2010 Customer Insights Conference on May 7 and 8 at the Yale School of Management. The conference is presented by Yale SOM’s Center for Customer Insights.

For the conference agenda and registration, please visit the Yale Center for Customer Insights website.

"This annual conference brings research and industry together," said Professor Ravi Dhar, Director of the Yale Center for Customer Insights. "It’s an opportunity for academics to share what they’re learning about consumers through empirical research, both with each other and with the marketers who are managing customer relationships and marketing strategies. The practitioners bring real world experience and their own innovations in understanding customers, which can spark new ideas for research. It’s an exchange of ideas."

Antonio Lucio, CMO of Visa, Inc., will discuss how understanding customers and consumers has driven the transformation of the company’s business imperatives and its marketing department over the last two years in his keynote speech "Innovation through Questions."

The two-day event will feature research presented around six themes: Maximizing Brand Performance, New Product Innovation, Social Media, Marketplace Impact, Understanding Consumer Choices, and Marketing Strategies.

Study findings will be presented by faculty from leading business schools including the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Columbia Business School, Harvard Business School, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. The research explores topics such as nudging customers toward portion control as a more effective alternative to menu labeling; tapping into the wisdom of crowds; the influence of well-connected social media users; how companies can use the concept of brand experience to create valuable experiences for their customers; and how a firm’s sales are affected by competitors’ advertising.

Executives from Brickfish, CVS Caremark, GeeYee, Google, Keller Fay Group, Millward Brown, and Patients Like Me will discuss how they and their clients are learning from and engaging with customers. Their presentations will include driving brand engagement through peer-to-peer advertising; how and why patients are sharing in-depth health information online; and placing a financial value on brand associations.

Members of the press are invited to attend. To request a press pass, please contact Tabitha Wilde, director of media relations, Yale School of Management: 203.432.6010; tabitha.wilde@yale.edu.