Partners Establish Insight Center

Nationwide Insurance has partnered with the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University (OSU) to create The Nationwide Center for Advanced Customer Insights, dedicated to researching and evaluating consumer behavior in the United States.

The partners will apply predictive modeling, data mining and advanced analytical techniques to help improve the understanding of customer behavior and consumer purchasing patterns.

Nationwide says it will use the knowledge gained from this research as a foundation for the development of plans and strategies to capture new markets, develop new products, enhance existing markets and products, and improve future profitability.

In addition, the center will offer students career opportunities by enabling them to develop quantitative skills.

'What distinguishes this center is the holistic, interdisciplinary approach students will be utilizing to solve today's real world business problems,' said James Lyski, Chief Marketing Officer for Nationwide Insurance. 'This partnership will allow us to foster innovative results by combining a broad base of academic disciplines to help address the most pressing problems we face every day.'

Ohio State will manage the center and staff it with OSU faculty, employees and graduate students; while Nationwide will provide an Executive-in-Residence, who will work on-site in the center.

The role of center Director will be carried out by Tom Bishop, an Associate Professor in the OSU Department of Statistics who specializes in statistical consulting, experiment design, regression analysis, and the role of statistical theory and methods within the context of the scientific method. He was previously the Director of the Statistical Consulting Service at Ohio State, and Manager of the Applied Statistics Section at the Battelle Columbus Laboratories.

Bishop explained that the center will manage both tactical projects involving the application of existing theory and methodologies to solve specific business and marketing problems, and research projects aimed at developing new analytical methodologies.

Web sites: www.nationwide.com and www.fisher.osu.edu .

Last week, ad and media research specialist Sequent and the Center of Media Design at Ball State University (BSU) launched a new media research company that will use 'state-of-the-art' methodologies to track consumer media behaviour.