Marketing Analytics Symposium – Sydney (MASS)

Prof. Harald Van Heerde (University of New South Wales)

Conference Chair

Harald van Heerde (Ph.D., University of Groningen, the Netherlands) is S.H.A.R.P. Research Professor of Marketing at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.  Harald specializes in econometric models to improve marketing decision making. His wide-ranging research interests include measuring the sales effects of the marketing mix, new media, loyalty programs, strategies to build brands and brand equity, electronic word of mouth, retailing, attribution modeling, customer acquisition, entertainment marketing and the role of PR and publicity.

Van Heerde is ranked in the top 10 of marketing scholars worldwide based on the volume of his publications in the leading marketing journals such as the Journal of Marketing (JM), the Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) and Marketing Science. Van Heerde is the recipient of eight paper awards: the MSI / H. Paul Root Award (JM), the William O'Dell Award for Long-term Impact (JMR), the Paul Green Best Paper Award (JMR), 2 x Informs Society of Marketing Science Long-term Impact Award, the Jan-Benedict Steenkamp Long-term Impact Award of IJRM and 2 x IJRM Best Paper Award. His papers were best paper award finalists at the premier journals on eighteen more occasions.

Van Heerde currently serves as an Editor of the Journal of Marketing. Van Heerde has served as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Marketing Research, at Marketing Science and IJRM.

Van Heerde has attracted over $2 million in research grants from the Australian Research Council, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the New Zealand Royal Society Marsden Fund, and the Marketing Science Institute. Van Heerde has consulted for leading corporations such as Unilever (the Netherlands), Edeka (Germany) and AZTEC (Australia). He is also an Extramural Fellow at Tilburg University, (the Netherlands).

Associate Prof. Mathew Chylinski (University of New South Wales, Augmented Research)

Conference Co-Chairs

Mathew Chylinski’s research focuses on modelling customer decision processes, and applications of emerging technologies in consumer markets. He has published in leading academic journals such as Marketing Science. Together with Professor Ko de Ruyter (City University London) and Professor Ashish Sinha (University of Technology Sydney) he is the lead investigator on an Australia Research Council research grant investigating the role of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies in retail environments. In his former role as the Director of the behavioural research laboratory (the BizLab) he was instrumental in launching a world first dedicated facility for studying customer behaviour in contexts of AR technology. As technology rapidly develops, understanding its implications for customers as well as marketing through the new mediums it offers becomes increasing relevant due to the challenges it poses to existing business models and practices. Mathew Chylinski’s research is able to articulate those challenges and offer clear guidance to practitioners in how to overcome and profit from such emerging challenges.

Professor of Practice Nicolas Chu (University of New South Wales, Sinorbis)

Nicolas Chu joined UNSW Business School in October 2018 as an esteemed Professor of Practice. He contributes to the intellectual life and public profile of the School of Marketing, the School of Information Systems and Technology Management and the Australian Graduate School of Management. He is responsible for developing innovative research questions, advising faculty on their research projects, assisting in course content development and serving as a liaison between the University and industry members.

A global digital thought-leader, Nicolas has extensive experience in managing technology businesses, from start-ups to large corporates in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific.

He is the CEO and founder of Sinorbis, the multi-award-winning company that revolutionizes the way businesses and organisations enter the Chinese market through technology. He is also an active mentor for a number of technology and digital initiatives in Asia Pacific.

Prior to Sinorbis, he was the global President of HotelClub and Ebookers, two leading global companies operating in more than 30 markets with an annual turnover of US$2.5 billion. HotelClub and Ebookers were part of Orbitz Worldwide, which was acquired in 2015 for US1.6bn.

Nicolas also spent eight years at the global online travel group Expedia, holding executive positions in Europe and Asia Pacific. For several years he led the APAC retail and product strategy for the group and then was the Managing Director of Expedia Australia and New Zealand. Under his leadership, the company became the leading online travel agency in the region.

He began his career by launching a business incubator in Europe, helping many online ventures to get set up, and was responsible for numerous online projects including for the French Ministry of Education and several French universities before joining Amadeus to take charge of their online and e-commerce projects in France.

Nicolas is a frequent keynote speaker at global conferences and is the author of the book "Reussir un Projet de Site Web" (6th Edition).

Prof. Jack Cadeaux (University of New South Wales)

Retail assortments, retail stock planning and retail performance

Distribution and supply chain management

Entrepreneurial marketing, marketing strategy, new product development, and marketing aspects of innovation

Macromarketing, public policy and consumption externalities

Professor John Roberts (University of New South Wales)

John Roberts is a Professor of Marketing in the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Business School and a Fellow of the London Business School and Fudan University. He has extensive senior executive experience and the company that he founded, Marketing Insights, an Asian leader in strategic marketing consulting, is now a part of the world's largest marketing information company, A C Nielsen. John is winner of the American Marketing Association's John A. Howard Award, its William O'Dell Award, and its Advanced Research Techniques Best Paper Award. He has also been a Finalist in the John Little Award for the best paper in marketing science three times and the Gary Lilien Marketing Science Practice Prize three times.

John sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Forecasting, Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Australian Journal of Management. He has won the AGSM @ UNSW Business School Distinguished Teacher Award, the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Marketing Distinguished Educator Award, and been Runner Up in the London Business School EMBA Distinguished Teacher Award. John is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, the Australian Institute of Management, the Australian Marketing Institute, the Australian Market and Social Research Society, and the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Marketing, as well as being a U.S. Harkness Fellow and a Fellow of the U.K. Twenty First Century Trust. John has recently been elected Vice President of Practice, Informs Marketing Science Society (ISMS) for a period of two years.

He has been a visiting professor at Stanford, M.I.T., the University of Hamburg, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. John has served on the Academic Advisory Boards of the Marketing Science Institute (based in Cambridge MA), the Chief Marketing Officers' Council (Menlo Park, CA), the Centre for Brand Management and Marketing (Hamburg), and AiMark (Tilburg), the Applied Economics Bulletin and Quantitative Abstracts in Marketing. He sits on the Australian Research Council's College of Experts.

Sameer Chopra

Sameer Chopra is a seasoned Analytics leader, bringing more than two decades of advanced analytics experience spanning Marketing Analytics, Product Analytics, and Customer Analytics.

He is currently an Analytics leader at Apple. Prior to which he was the Chief Analytics Officer at ID Analytics (Symantec) where he led the Data Science Group, building machine learning products for identity theft and credit risk management.

Chopra served as Chief Analytics Officer at GoDaddy, where he led the data science and advanced analytics group, as well as the business analytics teams.

Prior to GoDaddy, he was Chief Analytics Officer for Orbitz Worldwide (now Expedia) where he built the advanced analytics group from the ground up - applying data science across different facets of the organization, helping transform the culture to become more data and analytics driven

Chopra has also held leadership roles at eBay, including leading online marketing analytics for the firm. He has an MS in Operations Research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His undergraduate work in Math & CS was from Allegheny College, where he graduated valedictorian.

He currently also serves on the advisory board of Northwestern University’s Master’s in Analytics program, where he enjoys mentoring students and helping shape the curriculum. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area (Silicon Valley) with his wife and 2 children.

Vicky Falconer

Vicky leads business development for Big Data & Analytics across ANZ, enabling customers to drive sustainable business outcomes beyond PoC's with data, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Prior to AWS, Vicky ran the Insight Driven Organisation Labs (IDO) for Deloitte. IDO labs were designed to help organisations develop a tangible analytics strategy supported by an action plan to accelerate progress. These executive workshops were designed to create alignment, explore potential challenges and explore new ways to deliver quick wins whilst building a long term foundation for value generation.

Sidney Song

Sidney Song is a well-known evangelist and rock star in data-driven digital marketing area in China. (Please click on here for more details about Sidney, in Chinese)

Sidney used to work at Publicis Media Groupe as General Manager of DTI practice, now still consulting for the company.

Prior to joining Publicis Media Groupe, Sidney was Great China’s Chief Business Consultant of Adobe Omniture Business Unit, providing data-driven digital marketing and operations solutions for Chinese, Australian and South-east Asian clients. Before that, Sidney had been working as M&A; Director in Omnicom and Leading Consultant in MRM.

Sidney is also founder of WAW China (Web Analytics Wednesday Event in China), and is employed by Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics as guesting professor. He is also an expert committee of Baidu Official Certification Program.

His website chinawebanalytics.cn is recommended as one of the top 15 web analytics blogs all over the world by Avinash Kaushik in his book "Web Analytics 2.0". His blog accumulates over 2 million readers in past 11 years.