Data, measurement, and causal inferences in machine learning: opportunities and challenges for marketing

The emergence of digital data and the methods used to analyze them are revolutionizing marketing research. The vast quantity of data offers marketing researchers countless opportunities to better predict and potentially explain consumer behavior. Yet, as we will argue in this paper, marketing researchers should not prematurely abandon cognitive and methodological procedures that have been refined during centuries of philosophical and scientific thought. Merging the literatures from various hard sciences, we discuss recent challenges in data management and measurement in the era of digital data and the role of machine learning in causal inference.