By Dr Giang Trinh
The work of Frank Bass has had a great influence on the world of marketing via the work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and the widespread acclaim of the publication ‘How Brands Grow’. We recently passed the 90th anniversary of his birth and use this as an opportunity to look back on his key contributions to the modern marketing world.
Frank Bass was born on December 27, 1926, in the small town of Cuero, Texas. He grew up to be a pioneer in the field of marketing science. His landmark contribution was the Bass model. Introduced in 1969 this mathematical model predicts the adoption of a new product, particularly durable products and technology. Specifically the Bass model aims to predict how many customers will eventually adopt a new product and when they will adopt.
Bass proposed that the adoption process is influenced by three factors including innovation, imitation and market potential. Innovation refers to customers choosing to purchase based on their knowledge (e.g. advertising), whereas imitation is where customers choose to purchase based on the experience of other purchasers (e.g. word of mouth). If innovation dominates imitation, the new product will be immediately popular (Blockbuster type). On the other hand, if imitation dominates innovation, the new product will take a while to be popular (Sleeper type). The Bass model is simple yet surprisingly robust. Over the years, the model has been used and extended to a wide range of conditions covering categories from color TV and social networks to disposable diapers. In 2004, the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences voted his 1969 paper on the Bass model as one of the ten most influential papers published in the 50-year history of Management Sciences.
While he was famous for pioneering the application of mathematics to marketing, Bass was a champion of science not just engineering. He wrote a number of important articles calling for development of law-like patterns. In 2005, Bass was awarded an honorary Doctorate by the University of South Australia, along with Andrew Ehrenberg for advancing the scientific development of marketing, and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the University was named in their honor. The Institute is now the world’s largest center for research into marketing, sponsored by many leading international brands including Mars, Unilever, Procter & Gamble and ESPN.
In the course of his career, Bass produced more than 100 papers and mentored 60 PhD students. He was co-founder of Marketing Science, served as editor of the Journal of Marketing Research (1972-1975) and president of the Institute of Management Science (1978-1979). He received multiple awards including the William Odell Award (1979), the Paul D. Converse Award (1986), the John D.C. Little Award (1998), the Harold H. Maynard Award (1990), the Gilbert A. Churchill, Jr. Award (2002), and the Charles Coolidge Parlin Award (2003).
Bass died on December 1, 2006. His legacy is that the application of mathematics to marketing is no longer unusual, and it has now been shown many times that scientific law-like patterns, such as new product adoption, double jeopardy and duplication of purchase patterns, that repeat over different circumstances, can be discovered and applied. We are all very fortune that when he was a young Texan, he chose to be a professor rather than a cowboy, simply because professors make a lot more money than cowboys even though he believed that cowboys are more honest and intelligent than professors.
Written by Dr Giang Trinh, Senior Research Associate – Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science www.MarketingScience.info
