One of the most prominent modelling techniques that takes advantage of large amounts of data and accurately represents emerging phenomena is agent-based modelling (ABM). ABM focuses on large-scale systems such as telephone calls, social networks, political systems or commercial activities. ABM is especially powerful in demand forecasting cases when social interaction and/or cognitive biases are relevant, when consumer behaviour is complex and market behaviour volatile, when equation-based modelling would impose too many constraints, and when controlled experimentation is desirable but not feasible.
For this reason, ABM has been applied to different marketing applications and why this application is the core of our study. In particular, ABM is suited to understand how relationships between customers, brands and media drive the whole market dynamics. Today, ABM can increase our understanding of how the marketplace works, as the basic units of the model correspond directly to the real-world entities we are interested in, consumers and companies. Marketers can study how word of mouth and social influences travel across a network of consumers at negligible cost, allowing them to test the effects of micro-campaigns and marketing strategies on the diffusion of innovation at the macro level.
RØD Brand Consultants (RØD) is a start-up in the marketing sector. We have a technology partnership with RØD and together with the RØD team, we have developed the leading marketing analytics software: ZIO®. ZIO is actually a virtual laboratory based on the use of advanced social simulation and network analysis techniques, as well as cutting-edge marketing technologies such as behavioural economics and machine learning.
ZIO’s clients can evaluate an infinite number of marketing strategies in real time, before launching any of them in the market. This minimises the possibility of error and maximises the likelihood of selecting the most appropriate strategy to achieve the company’s objectives. RØD has recently started to provide its services to international companies. In particular, it has completed projects using the ZIO platform with the Coca Cola Great Britain division, updating its simulations for 2018 and policies for 2019. In addition, it counts several multinational firms as current clients: Jaguar/Land Rover and Domino’s Pizza, among others. From a national point of view, important Spanish firms are also ZIO clients: El Corte Inglés, WiZink and Pelayo. They are active in very different industry sectors (retail, banking and insurance, respectively).
Period
January 2015 –
Researchers
Óscar Cordón, Sergio Damas, Manuel Chica, Juan-Francisco Robles, Ignacio Moya (Instituto Interuniversitario Andaluz de Investigación en Data Science and Computational Intelligence).
Partners: William Rand (Poole School of Management, North Caroline State University, USA) y Raymond Chiong (University of Newcastle, Australia).
