Michael Trusov: Hands On Research and Training in Digital Marketing Tools
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Michael Trusov: Hands On Research and Training in Digital Marketing Tools

SOCIAL MEDIA, SEARCH ENGINES, ELECTRONIC WORDOFMOUTH, ECOMMERCE, RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS, ONLINE REVIEWS, USERGENERATED CONTENT, TEXT ANALYSIS, EYETRACKING AND DATA MINING ARE AMONG HIS ACADEMIC INTERESTS

A hands-on training for students in digital analytics and a stream of research on social media and social networks, search engines and e-commerce. This is the knowledge that Michael Trusov has brought to Bocconi University, coming from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business. «I see Bocconi as an excellent place to develop new research projects, expand an academic collaboration network, and establish new industry connections».
 
Born and raised in Latvia, Michael Trusov studied Computer Science and Information Technologies at the Riga Technical University. He never thought of Marketing as his career. Hence, when he decided to go back to school after spending a number of years working in the software development industry in Southern California, his initial focus was on Computer Science. «However, from sharing my academic interests with several Computer Science and business school professors, I realized that for the type of research that intrigued me the most, marketing might actually be a better fit. It naturally suited my research passion that encompasses technology, human behavior and business».
 
Timing was perfect. Internet marketing was at the early stages of development and carried the promise of opening up many exciting research opportunities. «Coming from the industry where I was involved in developing online applications, I joined a PhD program with a clear idea that I wanted to study how people use and interact on the Internet». He got his doctoral degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and joined the University of Maryland in 2007 as an Assistant Professor of Marketing. In 2013 he was promoted to Associate rank.   Professor Trusov’s publications earned him several awards, including the prestigious long-term contribution William F. O’Dell Award and the Paul E. Green Best Paper Award. As an empirical modeler, he works on social media, search engines, social networks, clickstream, electronic word-of-mouth, e-commerce, recommendation systems, online reviews, user-generated content, text analysis, eye-tracking and data mining.  «My research contributes to the field by providing substantive and methodological insights that help in solving challenging problems faced by digital marketing professionals».
 
His first academic publication in the digital marketing domain was motivated by a question posed by the manager of a popular online social networking site: what is the dollar worth of a word-of-mouth-referral to the firm? «Searching for the answer opened up several other academically interesting questions on how firms can measure the effects of word-of-mouth communication and how it compares to other forms of marketing communication». He later focused on the mechanisms through which the social networking sites keep their customers engaged. «From a managerial perspective, understanding who keeps the social networking site attractive – specifically, identifying those users who influence the site activity of others – is vital». He proposed a technique for discovering latent characteristics of the unobservable network of consumer interactions, showing that these characteristics can significantly improve a product’s pre-launch forecasts. He also researched digital profiling and advertising, search engine marketing, and the mechanisms through which consumer-generated product reviews influence firm’s sales. His most recent topics of interest are Internet of things, artificial intelligence, and online privacy.
 
Michael Trusov first came to Bocconi in 2015 as a Visiting Professor. He is currently teaching Web and Social Analytics and Marketing Analytics. «Since my first days as an Assistant Professor I was fortunate to teach almost exclusively on the topics which perfectly align with my research interest. This allows me to incorporate recent developments in the academic world into my classes. I try to create value for students by providing a hands-on training in digital marketing tools, methods, and technologies, while keeping a big picture perspective on how these all fit into business strategies employed by leading digital firms».
 
Find out more
 
Yuchi Zhang, Michael Trusov, Andrew T. Stephen, and Zainab Jamal, Online Shopping and Social Media: Friends or Foes?, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 81, No. 6, 2017.
 
Michael Trusov, Liye Ma, Zainab Jamal, Crumbs of the Cookie: User Profiling in Customer-Base Analysis and Behavioral Targeting, Marketing Science (special issue on Big Data), 35(3), 2016.
 
Michael Trusov, William Rand, Yogesh V. Joshi, Improving Prelaunch Diffusion Forecasts: Using Synthetic Networks as Simulated Priors, Journal of Marketing Research, December, Vol. 50, Issue 6, 2013.
 
Michael Trusov, Anand Bodapati, Randolph E. Bucklin, Determining Influential Users in Internet Social Networks, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 47 (4), 2010.

by Claudio Todesco
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