Every day, consumers make thousands of choices to determine which brands and products are most desirable. Companies attempt to predict those decisions through marketing research, a field that analyzes consumer trends and tailors products based on them.
Last week, Hillsdale graduate Megan Peitz ‘06 gave a presentation titled “Math, Marketing and Business” in which she addressed marketing research and how her Hillsdale math degree helped her in the field.
Peitz is the founder of Numerious Inc., a firm that performs conjoint analysis. Essentially, she shows respondents different combinations to see which they’re likely to buy, forcing them to make tradeoffs to show what they truly value. With the information she gathers, Peitz advises companies on the best product pricing, most recently working for Google.
“Google just released the wireless pixel buds … I can’t tell you about all the features of the product but I can tell you that I’m the person that told them how to price it and which features that should be in it,” Peitz said. “There are a lot of possibilities when you have a degree in math.”
She noted that being a mathematician is no easy feat. It requires working full time and often meeting rapid deadlines and last-minute requests for data. She recommends students interested in a math or marketing research career take steps to stay up to date and relevant in the field.
“Build up a good LinkedIn profile, get yourself out there,” she advised.
Other steps for success are reading about and taking courses for various programming languages such as R, Python, JavaScript, and HTML.
Freshman Abigail Elwell was encouraged by the talk.
“I’m in hard math classes right now so it was really encouraging when she said it’s okay to ask for help and be vulnerable, especially right before midterms,” Elwell said.
