Browse

The body of marketing
knowledge, mapped.

An empirical generalization is a finding that has held up across many independent studies, not a single result. Each one here is a plain-language translation of the underlying research, organized by the six value sets of the MarCaps framework. 27 are live today; more are in review.

28 findings

Exchange › Conversion

How Much Advertising Moves Sales

With advertising's effect on sales, how the number is measured matters as much as the market it came from.

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Exchange › Conversion

Price vs. Advertising: What Moves Sales More?

Short-term sales move far more on price than on advertising, but a bigger sales jump is not the same as a bigger profit.

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Exchange › Conversion

Television Advertising Weight and Sales Response

Adding more television advertising is not a dependable growth plan for established packaged goods.

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Exchange › Conversion

Drivers of Price Elasticity

Treat every price elasticity benchmark as conditional, not universal.

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Engagement › Connections

Drivers of Relationship Marketing Effectiveness

Relationship marketing is a portfolio, not a single playbook.

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Strategic › Product & Brand Management

Marketing Mix Drivers of New Brand Success

Treat distribution as brand strategy, not launch logistics.

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Exchange › Conversion

When Competitors' Ads Cancel Out Yours

When rivals are on air the same week, your ad's sales payoff can be cut in half. What drives the damage is how many of them advertise, not how much they spend.

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Strategic › Value Leveraging

Marketing vs. R&D vs. Operations

Of the three capabilities that drive firm performance, marketing's link to results is the strongest.

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Strategic › Growth Paths

Drivers of Organic Sales Growth

Innovation and advertising are the two strongest marketing levers for organic growth, and they work best funded together.

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Strategic › Value Leveraging

Advertising Spending Over the Business Cycle

Set advertising budgets for the cycle, not from the cycle.

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Strategic › Product & Brand Management

Market Share and Profit: The Rule of Three

More market share doesn't reliably mean more profit — the shape of your market and your position in it matter more.

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Exchange › Conversion

How Much Personal Selling Moves Sales

A dollar of selling effort keeps paying off well after the quarter it's spent.

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Knowledge › Marketing Analytics

Which Marketing Levers Move Sales Most?

For established brands, sales respond most to distribution and price; read the ranking as a size comparison, not a budget menu.

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Knowledge › Marketing Analytics

Brand Metrics as Early Warning

Advertising awareness, consideration, and liking are sales drivers, not soft metrics.

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Exchange › Conversion

Price and Advertising Effectiveness Over the Business Cycle

A recession makes shoppers more price-sensitive and advertising less effective, and the shift builds over months rather than showing up in the first weeks.

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Strategic › Product & Brand Management

How Distribution Drives Market Share

Share isn't proportional to distribution: the best-stocked products hold disproportionately more.

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Exchange › Customer Attraction

TV-Driven Branded Search

TV doesn't just build awareness. It sends people searching for your brand within hours.

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Knowledge › Marketing Analytics

What Marketing Research Can Actually Explain

Marketing research explains about as much of market behavior as psychology does.

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Engagement › Content

How Online Reviews Move Sales

Online reviews move sales, but how much depends on the product, the site, and how crowded the category is.

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Knowledge › Marketing Analytics

Marketing's Effect on Firm Value

What moves the company's stock-market value is the brand and customer base you own; the ad budget you spend in any one year barely moves it.

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Exchange › Conversion

Perceived Fairness of Price Changes

Price fairness depends more on the increase than the rationale.

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Experience › Customer Service

The Service-Profit Chain

The service-profit chain works, but not as a straight line.

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Exchange › Conversion

Search Advertising's Effect on In-Store Sales

Search ads can create store sales that online attribution misses.

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Engagement › Content

When Creative Advertising Pays Off

Creative advertising strengthens consumer response to the brand by working through several routes together, not just by grabbing attention.

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Strategic › Product & Brand Management

Parent Brand Equity and Extension Fit

Parent brand equity and perceived fit reinforce one another, with fit slightly stronger.

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Engagement › Content

How Brand Social Posts Move Sales

Your brand's own social posts move sales harder than they move likes and shares.

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Engagement › Content

What Makes Influencer Marketing Work?

Follower count is the wrong primary thing to buy in influencer marketing.

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Experience › Product/Service Innovation

Drivers of Consumer Resistance to AI

Consumer resistance to AI is a design variable, not a constant.

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