We had the opportunity to welcome Prof. Günther Hitsch, the Kilts Family Professor of Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as another visiting scholar in our Research Seminar Series in the winter semester 2022/2023.

Günther’s research focuses on many aspects of quantitative marketing. In this seminar, he presented one of his recent papers on optimal targeting policies. Together with his co-author, Sanjog Misra, they explore and compare several policies utilized by marketers for targeting customers during marketing campaigns, in scenarios such as email campaign or online ads. Their work also investigates the role of conditional average treatment effects (CATEs) in the profit generation of the respective targeting policies.

The paper presents conclusions in the form of a generalized framework for evaluation of targeting policies using a randomized sample. This is important for both scholars and practitioners because it allows them to meaningfully select the optimal targeting policy by testing on smaller data, rather than costly experimenting with the target population.

As a side note, according to our Austrian-born guest, this was the first lecture he had delivered in Austria. All we can say is that we are both honored and grateful for his visit and are looking forward to see him again!