Media Coverage

Does weather impact sales? Four data scientists noticed the weather was a “huge focal point for many mobile marketing campaigns.” But, they wondered, what specific weather conditions drove sales. Their research, appearing in INFORMS’ Marketing Science, shows many large marketers, such as Burberry, Ace Hardware, and Taco Bell (among others), unleashed weather-based mobile marketing messages, promoting specific products.

INFORMS member and professor of mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy Sommer Gentry represented INFORMS and the mathematics community on the FOX show Superhuman, by tackling an O.R. problem that involves counting sub-rectangles in an m-by-n grid and in an m-by-n grid with corners cut out. 

Anna Nagurney, PhD, INFORMS member, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Director of the Virtual Center of Supernetworks, explains the transportation and communications network needs of the U.S., from the internet, road systems, and our cell phones.

According to a study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, certain weather conditions are more amenable for consumer responses to mobile marketing efforts, while the tone of your ad content can either help or hurt such response depending on the current local weather.

While there is a great deal of contradictory advice for success in the workplace, setting manageable objectives and avoiding stretch goals will have a greater positive outcome, according to a study in the INFORMS journal Organization Science.