Bringing together areas such as innovation, marketing, and even fashion is one of the purposes of a recent collaborative project by a UANDES researcher.
Christian Pescher, a researcher and academic at the School of Economics and Business Administration conducts research on topics that address very different issues but converge toward a common objective: generating evidence that enables better policy design and more informed decision-making.
The project, titled Trickle up versus trickle down diffusion, examines the way in which innovations circulate among different social groups. The research analyzes more than 200 innovations and historical studies to understand when new ideas spread from elites to lower levels of the social hierarchy and when they emerge in marginalized communities and then reach the mainstream.
Pescher explains that his interest arose because "the classic narrative assumes that everything originates with the elites, but I'm interested in showing when and why creativity also emerges from below."
The evidence generated aims to recognize the innovative role of groups that are usually underestimated and offer tools for companies and entrepreneurs to detect with greater precision where new trends are emerging. This work is developed in collaboration with international academics in marketing and innovation, combining historical approaches and consumer theory.
Another of his studies, Effects of Sales Visits over the Business Cycle, focuses on the value of salespeople's face-to-face visits to customers at different points of the economic cycle. Pescher compares customers who received visits with similar customers who did not, using several years of data, with the objective of determining whether these interactions have different effects during periods of expansion or recession.
"In a crisis, many companies cut back on sales and marketing almost reflexively. I'm investigating whether sales visits are particularly valuable precisely at such times," he says.
The results aim to provide evidence for companies to make more strategic decisions in difficult times, avoiding reductions in resources in areas that could generate commercial stability and protect employment. Pescher conducts this research in collaboration with marketing and personal sales specialists from various institutions.
Pescher is part of an interdisciplinary team and collaborates with national and international researchers, enabling the examination of complex phenomena from multiple perspectives and with comparative evidence.