There are many situations where one is interested in predicting the expected number of events in period 2 given that x events occurred in period 1. For example, insurance companies must decide whether or not to cancel the insurance of drivers who had 3 or more accidents during the previous year....

Clemen and Winkler (1985) have described the theoretical effectiveness of Winkler's (1981) formula for optimally combining forecasts. The optimality of Winkler's formula is, however, contingent on actually knowing the forecasters' statistical properties, i.e., the variances and covariances of...

This article is concerned with counting and identifying those customers who are still active. The issue is important in at least three settings: monitoring the size and growth rate of a firm's ongoing customer base, evaluating a new product's success based on the pattern of trial and repeat...

Many clinics that offer in vitro fertilization (IVF) have begun to market the following options to couples: (1) an a la carte program where the couple pays $7,500 per attempt regardless of the outcome; or (2) a money-back-guarantee program where the couple pays a $15,000 fee that covers up to...

This study proposes a new customer lifetime model: the gamma/Gompertz distribution (G/G). The advantage of this model relative to the well-known Pareto distribution is twofold: (i) its probability density function can exhibit a mode at zero or an interior mode, and (ii) it can be skewed to the...

The launch of a new product or service via direct marketing is nearly always preceded by a test of that offering. Such a "live" test, conducted with a subset of the entire list of customer prospects, can sometimes be useful in a "go/no-go" decision regarding a full-scale launch of the offering....

In the first part of this paper we will review and modify the cluster analysis procedure presented by Green, Frank and Robinson [Green, P. E., R. E. Frank, P. J. Robinson. 1967. Cluster analysis in test market selection. Management Sci. 13 (8, April) B387-B400.] in a recent issue of this...

Professor Smith's article "Ranking Procedures and Subjective Probability Distribution" (Smith, L. H. 1967. Ranking procedures and subjective probability distributions. Management Sci. 14 (4, December) B236-B249.) is a worthwhile attempt at making the Bayesian decision theory concepts more...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Management Science. We take this opportunity to trace the history of the Marketing Department in Management Science, outline the role that the Marketing Department has played in supporting management science research in Marketing, its impact on the field,...

In an attempt to reduce the time taken by social science Ph.D. candidates to obtain their degrees, the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) of the United Kingdom has decided to withhold funds from social science departments of academic institutions with the poorest Ph.D....