From Little’s Law to Marketing Science: Essays in Honor of John D.C. Little

The legacy of a pioneer in operations research and marketing science.

John D. C. Little of MIT’s Sloan School of Management is famous for his contributions to operations research and marketing science. He formulated a fundamental theorem in queuing theory known as Little’s Law, which is used widely in a variety of fields. His work on such topics as optimal advertising experimentation, advertising budgeting, and aggregate marketing models, and its subsequent applications, has generated entire streams of research. This volume gathers papers from prominent researchers, including many of Little’s colleagues and former colleagues, that reflect this pioneering scholar’s lasting influence.

The book includes a profile of Little, detailing his career accomplishments; writings on managerial models, including papers on advertising media selection, customer lifetime value, and micromarketing; discussions of decision information models, covering topics that range from customer channel choice to stochastic variance assumption; and (in a paper coauthored by Little) an examination of Little’s Law today.

Contributors Makoto Abe, Rene Befurt, Andre Bonfrer, Robert Bordley, Maria Luisa Ceprini, Peter J. Danaher, Xavier Dreze, Daria Dzyabura, Theodoros Evgeniou, Fred M. Feinberg, John R. Hauser, Kamel Jedidi, Laoucine Kerbache, Janghyuk Lee, Guilherme (Gui) Liberali, John D. C. Little, Erin MacDonald, Dina Mayzlin, Wendy W. Moe, Elisa Montaguti, Ricardo Montoya, Pamela D. Morrison, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, John H. Roberts, Linda Court Salisbury, Jiwoong Shin, Rajendra Srivastava, Olivier Toubia, Michael Trusov, Glen L. Urban, Sara Valentini, Masahiko Yamanaka