IT’S IN THE DATA: A multimethod study on how SaaS-businesses can utilize cohort analysis to improve marketing decision-making
2020 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Incorporating data and analytics within marketing decision-making is today crucial for a company’s success. This holds true especially for SaaS-businesses due to having a subscription-based pricing model dependent on good service retention for long- term viability and profitability. Efficiently incorporating data and analytics does have its prerequisites but can for SaaS-businesses be achieved using the analytical framework of cohort analysis, which utilizes subscription data to obtain actionable insights on customer behavior and retention patterns. Consequently, to expand upon the understanding of how SaaS-businesses can utilize data-driven methodologies to improve their operations, this study has examined how SaaS-businesses can utilize cohort analysis to improve marketing decision-making and what the prerequisites are for efficiently doing so.
Thus, by utilizing a multimethodology approach consisting of action research and a single caste study on the fast-growing SaaS-company GetAccept, the study has concluded that the incorporation and utilization of cohort analysis can improve marketing decision-making for SaaS-businesses. This conclusion is drawn by having identified that:
- The incorporation of cohort analysis can streamline the marketing decision-making process; and
- The incorporation of cohort analysis can enable decision-makers to obtain a better foundation of information to base marketing decisions upon, thus leading to an improved expected outcome of the decisions.
Furthermore, to enable efficient data-driven marketing decision-making and effectively utilize methods such as cohort analysis, the study has concluded that SaaS- businesses need to fulfill three prerequisites, which have been identified to be:
- Management that support and advocate for data and analytics;
- A company culture built upon information sharing and evidence-based decision-making; and
- A large enough customer base to allow for determining similarities within and differences between customer segments as significant.
However, the last prerequisite applies specifically for methods such as or similar to cohort analysis. Thus, by utilizing other methods, SaaS-businesses might still be able to efficiently utilize data-driven marketing decision-making, as long as the first two prerequisites are fulfilled.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. , p. 74
Keywords [en]
saas, software as a service, software-as-a-service, data, cohort, cohort analysis, cohort-analysis, marketing, decision-making, decision making, marketing decision-making, marketing decision making, data, subscription, pricing model, data-driven, data driven, analytics, metrics, multimethod, multimethodology, action reserach, growth, profitability, segment
National Category
Engineering and Technology Business Administration Computer and Information Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-167620ISRN: LIU-IEI-TEK-A--20/03665—SEOAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-167620DiVA, id: diva2:1454493
External cooperation
GetAccept AB
Presentation
2020-05-25, Linköping, 15:15 (Swedish)
Supervisors
Examiners
2020-07-212020-07-162020-07-21Bibliographically approved