Text into numbers: Can marketers benefit from unstructured data?

Author's Biography

Barry P. Keating is a professor of business economics at the University of Notre Dame. He specialises in understanding how not-for-profit organisations function, more specifically, how they respond to incentives, changes in revenue and cost conditions, and changes in regulatory mechanisms. He frequently works with not-for-profits examining the role and value of volunteers and forecasting blood supplies for the United States. Barry has co-authored a book examining the economics of nonprofit firms and government units (Blackwell) and a book examining the use of cost benefit analysis in nonprofits (BEPress). He has done extensive work in the areas of business forecasting and regulation. Barry’s forecasting and predictive analytics textbook (in its 6th edition; McGraw-Hill) is the best-selling forecasting book for use in colleges and universities. He consults with both forecasting and data mining software producers and firms with forecasting problems (eg Cadbury, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Toyota, Wells Fargo, etc). Barry is a Heritage Foundation Fellow (1992–1996), a Heartland Institute Research Fellow, Former President of the Economic Club of Michiana, former Chair of the Department of Finance at Notre Dame, and serves on the Board of Advisors of both the Indiana Policy Review Group and the Institute of Business Forecasting. He has published more than 100 articles for professional journals and trade publications. Barry is the winner of a Kaneb Teaching Award from Notre Dame, the MBA Professor of the Year Award, and is a fellow of the Kaneb Center.