Target then treat: analyzing sales impacts of two-level assignment

Music City Center 

In sales operations, a customer is first assigned to a sales program (e.g., defined by market segmentation or customer prioritization) and then treated in doses by a sales team within that program (e.g., through meetings and pitches). We use these two levels of treatment assignment to deconfound the impact of a sales team's treatment dose on customer outcomes. First, for sales program assignment based on thresholding rules (e.g., customer spending), we apply regression discontinuity techniques to identify exogenous variation in that assignment process. Second, using this exogenous variation, we apply instrumental variables techniques to analyze the impact of sales treatments on a continuous scale. We present a case study and application about the intent-to-treat and as-treated impact of sales specialists that focus on key product areas in Google's advertising business.

Causal inference

Two-stage treatment

Regression discontinuity

Instrumental variables

Customer sales

Impact analysis 

Section on Statistics in Marketing