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Campus Spotlight: Hari Sundaram

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Marketing in a Digital World

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

4.7 (5,620 ratings) | 240K Students Enrolled

Course 1 of 7 in the Digital Marketing Specialization

This course examines how digital tools, such as the Internet, smartphones, and 3D printing, are revolutionizing the world of marketing by shifting the balance of power from firms to consumers. Marketing in a Digital World is one of the most popular courses on Coursera with over 150,000 Learners and is rated by Class Central as one of the Top 50 MOOCs of All Time (https://www.class-central.com/report/top-moocs/). This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.

Skills You'll Learn

Marketing, Digital Marketing, Marketing Mix, Pricing Strategies

Reviews

4.7 (5,620 ratings)

5 stars
4,133 ratings
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1 star
60 ratings

HJ

Aug 08, 2016

Greetings ,\n\nThis course is very beneficial and i thank the professor and everyone else at Coursera.\n\nPlease direct me, to be a talented successful individual in Digital Marketing.\n\nThank You.

OA

May 31, 2019

A really useful course, which contains new information about 3D Printing, and some new strategies for digital marketing. If you are new to digital marketing, I advise you to start with this course.

From the lesson

Digital Tools for Setting the Right Prices for Your Products

How are products priced in our digital world? In this module, you will learn how new digital tools are enabling customers to take a more active role in both evaluating and setting the prices they pay for the products they buy.

Campus Spotlight: Hari Sundaram23:11

Taught By

Aric Rindfleisch
John M. Jones Professor of Marketing

Transcript

[ Background Sounds ]

[ Music ]

>> Hi. Today we're here at the Siebel Center

for Computer Science here at the University of Illinois.

>> The Siebel Center was built in 2004.

Thomas Siebel donated $32 million to the University

of Illinois for this building.

Currently, the building houses the University

of Illinois computer science department which is one

of the top five computer science departments in the nation.

>> Great. Today we're here to speak

with Professor Hari Sundaram.

Hari's new to the University of Illinois.

He holds joint departments, both in the department

of computer science and also the department of advertising.

Hari does cutting edge research on how digital tools

such as smart phones can be used to change

and influence human behavior.

You ready Jolie?

>> Yeah, let's go.

>> Let's go.

[ Music ]

We're here with Hari Sundaram.

Hari, thank you for the opportunity

to visit with you today.

>> My pleasure.

>> Can you tell us a little bit about yourself

and the work that you do?

>> Sure. I'm an associate professor in computer science

and I have a joint appointment with computer science

and advertising and-- but my primary appointment is

in computer science, so much of my work deals

with analyzing collective behavior in online networks.

So, an example of this would be how do you discover

group formation.

What's technically in computer sciences we call

community discovery.

How do you discover groups that form online?

And some of the other problems that we have looked at is

that how do you discover the rise of coordinated behavior.

So, I don't know if you'd noticed that sometimes

when on Facebook if there's a like on a particular post,

the next time you log in there are literally hundreds of likes.

It's almost as though all

of this is happening simultaneously.

So, how do you discover the rise of coordinated behavior?

It'd be a building of mobile network laboratory.

That is, a laboratory that runs on people's smart phones.

So, the idea is that if you want

to understand how people make decisions in the presence

of social signals, that is,

knowing what your friends are doing at this particular time,

if you want to understand how people react to messaging

in situ, like if you go to Walmart

and you see a particular message,

how will people make a decision then.

You need to have infrastructure that allows you

to measure reactions

to different circumstances or contexts.

So, that's the kind-- so I'm interested in networks

in general, outside of Facebook and Twitter.

So, for example, there's a lot of research

in behavioral psychology that suggests

that when individuals make decisions we are influenced

by decisions of our friends as well as people

with whom we can relate to.

So, for example, as a trivial example, if I am walking

in downtown Chicago and I walk past an Indian restaurant

and I see the restaurant with a lot of other people

from India eating there, then it's a cue

that perhaps these people find value in this restaurant

and I should join them, even though I don't know them.

So, I'm trying to make use of this--

of these principles from behavioral psychology as part

of my research in how people take decisions

in social networks.

>> OK.

>> I was just going to ask if this primarily focuses

on social media then because you had mentioned Facebook

and Twitter and all these different--

>> Yeah, it does.

So, it began-- a lot of my work begin

with deep interest in social media.

I was interested

in understanding how people cooperate online.

How do-- you know, how does meaning form

through consensus online.

So, that's how it began, but then I began to realize

that networks play a much--

a really important part in our lives.

If you begin to think of networks,

not just Facebook or Twitter--

>> OK.

>> But in terms of friendships, right?

All of us have had friendships for millennia.

I mean, human beings have--

the bases of human society are these strong relationships

that exist between the individuals.

If you start thinking of networks as preexisting outside

of social media, then you begin to ask yourself how is it

that individual decision-making is affected

by these relationships.

>> And you mentioned that these relationships may be formed

around a common affinity,

so could that be a brand, a product?

>> Could be.

It could be, for example, all those people

who like the New York Times, for example.

So, it could be that many of the people

who read the New York Times have many other attributes,

perhaps all of them are liberal, for example,

or some of them have higher incomes that allow them

to have affinity with each other.

>> OK. How about things like automobiles,

so things like Jeep is known

for having a strong brand community, for example.

>> Sure. Absolutely.

So, yes. You can definitely form interest groups

where you can join groups whereby, you know,

you profess an interest for that brand

and all the different dimensions that the brand entails.

>> OK. So, I know you're doing this cutting edge research,

do we see any firms that are utilizing these techniques

to help market their products?

>> So, many of the-- so all this stuff that I'm doing is still

in its infancy, even outside.

So, people are very interested in using social media

for marketing purposes, for example.

It's been widely-- for example, it's been widely used in terms

of product placements on blogs, for example.

It's been used in wire marketing whereby, you know,

individuals go to bars or hotels or other places and they profess

to be using a particular product.

The big question that I'm trying to address is the question

of how do we persuade millions of individuals

to adopt behaviors that are beneficial to them, right?

An example would be can one reduce their energy consumption.

All of us are interested

in leading a more healthy lifestyle, right?

So, if we can persuade people to adopt more healthy behaviors,

it would have a huge impact on society, right?

Not only would people lead healthier lives,

they would lead more productive lives.

As a direct consequence,

insurance rates will fall, right?

If you start thinking about reducing our energy footprint,

you know, it will have a huge impact,

cascading impact on sustainability.

Right? So, that is the framing from which I come from.

So, when you think about authenticity in that context,

I'm interested in having people sign up for networks

for behaviors that they want to adopt,

but somehow can't seem to manage.

I want to eat healthy, but for whatever reason I happen

to be eating more steaks every week than I should, right?

How do I persuade myself to be more healthy?

So, what my goal is to embed you in a network of friends

and people that you can relate to and you will start now

in my network you'll start seeing messages.

Promotional messages perhaps from businesses,

but also messages from your friends saying that--

an example of this message would be

that Hari, it's 11 a.m. today.

I know you're about to go eat lunch, but 7 out of 10

of your friends have just gone to eat a salad.

>> So, you'd get this message on your phone--

>> On your phone, yes.

>> It would pop up on the screen.

>> It would pop up on the screen and so these are the kinds

of nudges that slowly help you attain the behaviors

that you want.

>> So, how does this work?

How does this message on my screen nudge my behavior

to eat healthy versus have--

>> So, the idea is that you're connected, so you're going

to be influenced by the people that you see.

So, if it is your friends who are adopting the behavior,

then it's more likely that you will adopt this behavior.

Or if it's people that you admire or have an affinity with,

you're much more likely to adopt the behavior.

So, there's a lot of research that talks about, you know,

if there-- based on the social norms,

knowing the social norms makes a big difference.

>> So, the social norms, perhaps peer pressure?

>> Peer pressure, but social norms make a big difference.

So, this familiar towel study--

I don't know if you're familiar with this.

In this towel study, what they did is

that they put these messages inside hotel rooms

that said that-- and these statistics were true,

they said 75% of the people who have stayed

in this room have reused the towel.

>> I've seen these signs.

>> That's right.

This is partly due to the work of Robert Cialdini,

who's worked extensively in persuasion.

This is-- the adoption statistics roles.

So, that's the idea.

So, if you begin to understand what the social norms are,

what is it that your friends are doing, what is it that people

like you are doing, might you be more inclined to adopt?

>> As you mentioned, this desire for collective action

and belonging is, you know, is a deep human trait

and that these behaviors and these social norms

and peer pressure also, you know, quite old.

So, what is new here in terms of the digital side?

So, how are these digital tools

like the smart phone changing these very traditional,

you know, human traits and motives?

>> I think the biggest difference is scale.

So, so far, if you think about the role of computing in many

of these complex human questions--

these are not computer science questions,

these are human questions that intersect, you know, psychology,

economics, and now technology.

So, what has particularly changed in the last 10

or 15 years-- 2 things have happened.

One is that the cost

of communication has dramatically reduced.

People have access to devices

that are essentially full-fledged computers,

a.k.a. smart phones, right?

And I think the other thing that has happened is

that technologies such as Flickr and Facebook,

Flickr and Twitter, what they've shown us is the extraordinary

desire for humans to be with each other, right?

Be online.

You know, this desire to connect with other people.

We've always known this, but Facebook has shown to the extent

at which we seek this.

Right? So, I think the key to technology is I think going

to play an increasing role as a glue in solving some

of these big complex questions

that humanity has found itself confronting.

>> So, as you know, this course is called marketing

in a digital world, we talked

about the digital aspect just now, how about a bit

about the marketing side?

So, [inaudible] this as a tool for social good,

like sustainability and healthy eating and energy usage.

How do you envision firms using this

or consumers using these tools to change marketplace behavior?

>> So, excellent question.

So, for example, consider this idea that, you know,

I've joined the social networking app to promote--

so that I become more healthy.

Right? So, I have a vested interest

in becoming more healthy, right?

And I'm-- now, let's say the marketplace knows this in terms

of businesses know that, you know what,

Hari has a tendency to eat healthy.

He walks at Siebel Center.

Can I incentivize him to come to my restaurants, make him aware

of the kind of products that are available, for example,

dishes that are available in my restaurant

that he can partake that is healthy?

So, first is promotional messages that can come

to me when I'm nearby.

Second thing is the cascading effect of being healthy, right?

So, let's say I adopt these healthy behaviors

and I've become more healthy.

I call my insurance company and say look,

I've really adopted a healthy behavior, healthy lifestyle.

Cut my insurance.

So, naturally the insurance company's going to come around

and say where's the proof?

It's like, I'm not going to believe you.

And a very important aspect

of my work is behavior verification.

So, I claim that I've done something and can I prove

to another person that what I claim is accurate.

Now, if the insurance companies know that Hari is very healthy,

leads a very healthy lifestyle, goes to bed early,

sleeps adequate number of hours and so on,

they might cut my insurance rate.

So, you-- I think you'll start to see--

provided individuals are willing

to expose their behavioral history in return for some sort

of a, you know, cut in prices,

you'll see a very interesting dynamic taking place

between businesses and individuals now.

>> So, going back to what you were saying before,

I think privacy might be one of the issues with social media

and digital marketing and all of that,

but you said people would be migrating more to perhaps show,

you know, companies their behavior.

Why do you think they're going to make that change?

>> Well, only in response for some sort

of an advantage, right?

So, this-- we're already seeing this.

For example with Progressive, an insurance company,

car insurance company, now puts in small monitors

in individuals' cars, right?

Now, in response for good driving behavior,

Progressive says that it'll give you a cut

in your insurance rate.

So, only if I believe that the company

that wants my behavioral profile will give me some sort

of a price cut, but I totally agree with you.

In return, it also has to say that it will honor my privacy.

It will not resell my data to somebody else

without my permission.

>> Can you give us a demonstration of how this works?

>> I'll be glad to.

So, what this dashboard allows us to do is that it allows us

to configure and generate apps that have a very specific focus.

So, this infrastructure allows us

to create social networking apps that are across platform,

across Android, iPhone, and Windows Mobile,

and what it allows--

this particular dashboard shows the experimental configuration.

So, you know, experimenter could create a database,

could select classes to be created, could select things

like what kind of network topology they want and,

you know, and add any special cases as they need.

For example, in this case a friend.

They could also configure things like what to show for any user.

So, you know, you could have thresholds.

What kind of thresholds do you want to use to trigger positive

or negative messages, number of messages per day,

any particular time messages ought to be displayed,

and things like if you're trying to understand the relationship

between messages and influence, so as I discussed earlier,

we need to start thinking in terms of positive

and negative framing of information.

So, begin figure out which users are part

of the experimental group who get positive messages,

who get negative messages, and the control group

that gets neutral messages.

And there are some other features here

that allow an experimenter to think

about message display based on granularity including, you know,

time, including space, as well as network.

So, the first app that we've created

with that infrastructure is an app

that focuses on healthy living.

So, the idea is that you want to persuade people

to have healthy eating and exercising behaviors and we want

to run a controlled experiment that begins

to understand the effects of different kinds

of information framing, the different kinds

of network structures that persuade people

to eat healthy and exercise, right?

So, we created this app.

So, what you do is that you login with Facebook

and it's a pretty standard procedure.

You'd find this on many different apps.

So, this is an example of Sanjana

who is enjoying a apple Danish.

So, if you go down, this is my breakfast for today.

I'm also eating the same apple Danish.

You can like if you want, you can enter a comment, and,

you know, and the friends

in my network have entered these comments.

So, if you go down, you'll find that you'll see activities

of people in your network who have posted things

about where they've gone and what they have--

photographs of what they've eaten

and so what we also have are these informational messages

that attempt to persuade you to subtly change your behavior.

So, for example, this one says

if you're a serious grad student, this would be

of most relevance to you.

It says four out of seven serious grad students have eaten

healthy over the past week.

You get some other statistics like 63 out of 100 of the people

in the network have eaten in North Urbana,

so this is an example of a special aggregate.

So, all these messages

that you're right now are positive healthy messages

and that's because I'm part of the control group

that gets these positive messages, right?

So, you can go down and you can see, you know, other messages.

For example, this particular message says

that if you have a very large network, if you and your network

on average walk 62,000 steps you'd have collectively walked a

full circle.

Of course, here my network is extraordinarily large,

so that is actually possible.

So, you go down and you know you get other kinds

of statistics as well.

You also, for example, you also get tabular information.

We selected tables in part because graphs are very hard

to read on a smart phone.

It's very easy to generate a graph, but it's very hard

to read the statistics and, you know, we allow you

to generate graphs here.

So, what else can you do?

You can obviously-- again, it's a social network,

you can take photographs of food that you've eaten.

So, in this particular application,

the idea is that you decide-- so you decide to--

what you do is that you several things.

In this particular application you do several things.

You figure out how much money you want to spend.

OK, so in this particular case, if I want to spend only $9,

I would have this setting.

And I have this setting that says vegetarian

and so the minute setting is very interesting.

For example, if I set it to 60 minutes,

it means that the application should give me restaurants

or suggest restaurants to me where I can find food for less

than $9 and I can be back in my office within 60 minutes.

Right? So, I save these preferences and then

when I do a search, I can--

immediately I have restaurant suggestions

that are based upon my preferences

and as you can see many of these restaurants are close by.

There, you know, for example, Don Juan Cocina is

within five minutes and the average cost of something

that I can eat there is around $6, right.

Now, for example, then if choose Don Juan's Cocina Mexicana

and Cantina, I get this nice map that I can just post

and say that I'm going.

OK? So, once I say I'm going, then my entire network gets

to see this information.

It says that Hari is going to Don Juan Cocina Mexicana

and Cantina and so my network is informed, right?

And then once I got to my network, I go there

and in this application you're supposed to take a photograph

of the food that you've eaten which you post, right?

So, in our network, you get points only

if you take photographs of what you've eaten.

Now, of course it's very hard to take--

to understand from a photo if the photo is healthy or not,

so at the back end we have another framework that farms

out these photographs to other members of the network

who don't really know that it is Hari who has posted,

so they will anonymously rate this food,

that actually gives me a healthy rating

of whether I've eaten healthy or not.

So, the key point about this infrastructure is

that it allows us to rapidly prototype a wide variety

of applications, not just for health,

but we are also developing an application for public safety.

You can also have an application for entertainment.

The key idea is making apps that have a specific purpose

that solves a problem that people actually have.

Once you create such apps that are engaging, at the back end,

the experimenter can run small experiments

to understand the effects of different kinds of messaging,

different kinds of topologies, different kinds of, you know,

of settings such as, for example, what happens

if at 11 a.m. you get a push notification on your smart phone

that says 7 out of 10 of your friends are eating a

salad today.

So, it's very hard to evaluate these questions

on existing social networks like Twitter or Facebook

because we don't really have full control of what members

of the network see and when they see it.

>> It's 2014; where are we in 10 years

down the road, [laughter] 2024, 25?

>> It's hard to predict the future, but I'm going

to use a quote from one of my favorite authors,

William Gibson, who said that the future has already happened.

It's just unevenly distributed, right?

So, I think the biggest thing that we will see is

that we will see technology transform mundane things.

We'll see transform things like adoption

of large-scale behaviors like becoming more healthy.

>> Looking at technology, here you have a demonstration of,

you know, the smart phone.

What other tools, digital tools, might play a role

in this future that you've laid out?

>> So, I think an important part of it is

that when I say technology is infused everywhere,

I mean that it could be in the very fabrics that we wear.

So, I think wearables will become much more important.

They may not become prominent necessarily as prominent as the,

you know, forthcoming Apple watch.

It could be, for example, some of the fibers woven

into your shirt and that could be tracking things

like heart rate, it could be tracking things like, you know,

whether you're breathing properly.

Right? Obviously, the World Wide Web will continue

to play a very important role in terms of connecting people.

>> Certainly.

>> Very fascinating stuff.

Where would someone go to find out more information

about the work that you're doing?

>> So, the best, best place would be my website.

Would be sundaram.cs.illinois.edu

or they should get in touch with me over email.

>> Great. Thank you so much!

We appreciate your time.

>> Thank you.

Thank you so much.

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