The Role of Polynomials in Marketing
Marketing and Math
Marketing is all about how to make people love and buy certain products or services. One may think that math and marketing don’t have too much in common. But this is not true. Marketing is not only about creativity; a good marketing specialist is always analyzing the results of his/her activities, and mathematics is a perfect tool for that analysis. Simple polynomials play a very important role in this analysis.
How Polynomials Help to Describe What People Think: Practical Example
Marketing specialists often perform studies on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction shows how happy customers are with the company’s products and services.
Suppose a company, let’s call it Company X, conducts a survey where customers rate the price and quality of service. Suppose the significance of price is 75%, and the quality of service is 25%. Using a polynomial, we can express total customer satisfaction:
\[ \text{Customer satisfaction} = 0.75x_1 + 0.25x_2 \]
Where \( x_1 \) and \( x_2 \) are scores given by customers during the survey. Suppose the survey results indicate an 8 out of 10 for both price and quality. The overall satisfaction is also 8 points:
\[ 0.75 \cdot 8 + 0.25 \cdot 8 = 8 \, (\text{points}) \]
Now, the company decides to change things — they raise prices but also enhance service quality. In the next survey, customers rate the price at 7 points and quality at 10 points:
\[ 0.75 \cdot 7 + 0.25 \cdot 10 = 7.75 \, (\text{points}) \]
The new satisfaction score is 7.75 points, lower than before. Why? Because in this example, the significance of price in the polynomial is much higher than the significance of service quality (0.75 vs. 0.25). It means that for customers, the price is three times more important than the quality of service. That’s why, even with improved quality, the satisfaction decreased. (Remember, this is for this example only).
Key Takeaway
Polynomials are not something that exists only in math textbooks. In our example, we described and measured what people think of their customer experience using polynomials. In their various forms, polynomials are useful in many aspects of real life, such as marketing, forestry, engineering, and many other disciplines.
Check the Facts
It is a good idea to make sure that the information you find on the internet is true. For creating this article, we used several sources, like these:
- Gao, Wei, and Hua Fan. “Omni-channel customer experience (in) consistency and service success: a study based on polynomial regression analysis.” Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research 16.6 (2021): 1997-2013.
- Limakrisna, Nandan, and Hapzi Ali. “Model of customer satisfaction: Empirical study at fast food restaurants in Bandung.” International Journal of Business and Commerce 5.6 (2016): 132-146.
These are scientific articles, which may be somewhat difficult to read. If so, then just try a Google search with words “math for marketers” to get more information about how math in general and polynomials, in particular, are used in the marketer’s work.
Video version
For those who want to delve deeper into the topic, we invite you to watch our video tutorials. The tutorial for this article provides more details and also reveals some information about what essential knowledge in physics, biology, and chemistry is useful for a good marketer. Check the preview below or subscribe to the full video.
More reading:
Explaining how math and science are applied in the real world is what we do at DARTEF! Check out our article showcasing another practical real-world application of polynomials:
Additionally, we have an article explaining how math is utilized in making crucial business decisions: