This two-volume handbook presents a collection of novel methodologies with applications and illustrative examples in the areas of data-driven computational social sciences. Throughout this handbook, the focus is kept specifically on business and consumer-oriented applications with interesting sections ranging from clustering and network analysis, meta-analytics, memetic algorithms, machine learning, recommender systems methodologies, parallel pattern mining and data mining to specific applications in market segmentation, travel, fashion or entertainment analytics. A must-read for anyone in data-analytics, marketing, behavior modelling and computational social science, interested in the latest applications of new computer science methodologies. The chapters are contributed by leading experts in the associated fields.The chapters cover technical aspects at different levels, some of which are introductory and could be used for teaching. Some chapters aim at building a common understanding of the methodologies and recent application areas including the introduction of new theoretical results in the complexity of core problems. Business and marketing professionals may use the book to familiarize themselves with some important foundations of data science. The work is a good starting point to establish an open dialogue of communication between professionals and researchers from different fields. Together, the two volumes present a number of different new directions in Business and Customer Analytics with an emphasis in personalization of services, the development of new mathematical models and new algorithms, heuristics and metaheuristics applied to the challenging problems in the field. Sections of the book have introductory material to more specific and advanced themes in some of the chapters, allowing the volumes to be used as an advanced textbook. Clustering, Proximity Graphs, Pattern Mining, Frequent Itemset Mining, Feature Engineering, Network and Community Detection, Network-based Recommending Systems and Visualization, are some of the topics in the first volume. Techniques on Memetic Algorithms and their applications to Business Analytics and Data Science are surveyed in the second volume; applications in Team Orienteering, Competitive Facility-location, and Visualization of Products and Consumers are also discussed. The second volume also includes an introduction to Meta-Analytics, and to the application areas of Fashion and Travel Analytics. Overall, the two-volume set helps to describe some fundamentals, acts as a bridge between different disciplines, and presents important results in a rapidly moving field combining powerful optimization techniques allied to new mathematical models critical for personalization of services. Academics and professionals working in the area of business anyalytics, data science, operations research and marketing will find this handbook valuable as a reference. Students studying these fields will find this handbook useful and helpful as a secondary textbook.

A practical guide to effective business model testing 7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder’s global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas. Testing Business Ideas explains how systematically testing business ideas dramatically reduces the risk and increases the likelihood of success for any new venture or business project. It builds on the internationally popular Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas by integrating Assumptions Mapping and other powerful lean startup-style experiments. Testing Business Ideas uses an engaging 4-color format to: Increase the success of any venture and decrease the risk of wasting time, money, and resources on bad ideas Close the knowledge gap between strategy and experimentation/validation Identify and test your key business assumptions with the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas A definitive field guide to business model testing, this book features practical tips for making major decisions that are not based on intuition and guesses. Testing Business Ideas shows leaders how to encourage an experimentation mindset within their organization and make experimentation a continuous, repeatable process.

Developing and executing marketing strategies is a vital aspect of any business and few books currently cover this with relation to creative industries. This textbook provides students and managers in the creative industries with a solid grounding in how to maximize the impact of their marketing efforts across a range of business types in the creative and cultural industries. The author, an experienced cultural marketing educator, provides sector-contextual understanding to illuminate the field by: • taking a strategic approach to developing marketing plans; • bringing together strategic planning, market research, goal setting, and marketing theory and practice; • explaining how content marketing on social media encourages a relationship with consumers so that they co-promote the creative product. With a range of learning exercises and real-life examples throughout, this text shows students how to create successful marketing plans for their creative businesses. This refreshed edition is a valuable resource for students and tutors of creative, cultural and arts marketing worldwide.

The Second European Edition of Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm by Wilson, Zeithaml, Bitner and Gremler uniquely focuses on the development of customer relationships through quality service. Reflecting the increasing importance of the service economy, Services Marketing is the only text that put the customer's experience of services at the centre of its approach. The core theories, concepts and frameworks are retained, and specifically the gaps model, a popular feature of the book. The text moves from the foundations of services marketing before introducing the gaps model and demonstrating its application to services marketing. In the second edition, the book takes on more European and International contexts to reflect the needs of courses, lecturers and students. The second edition builds on the wealth of European and International examples, cases, and research in the first edition, offering more integration of European content. It has also be fully updated with the latest research to ensure that it continues to be seen as the text covering the very latest services marketing thinking. In addition, the cases section has been thoroughly examined and revised to offer a range of new case studies with a European and global focus. The online resources have also been fully revised and updated providing an excellent package of support for lecturers and students.

Digital transformation is shaping a new landscape for businesses and their customers. For marketing professionals, advancing technology (artificial intelligence, robots, chatbots, etc.) and the explosion of personal data available present great opportunities to offer customers experiences that are ever richer, more fluid and more connected. For customers, this ecosystem is synonymous with new roles. They are more autonomous and have power alongside the company: they influence, innovate, punish and more. These developments push companies to implement new customer strategies. It is in this context, marked by pitfalls and paradoxes, that the authors of this book reflect on the customer relationship, what it has become and what it will be tomorrow. The book provides practitioners, teacher-researchers and Master's students with a state of the art and a prospective vision of customer relations in a digital world. It is aimed at those who want to gain an up-to-date understanding of the field and find all the keys needed to project themselves into the future.