Measuring long-term outcomes using short-term data and surrogates

Image courtesy of Cai et al. (2023) Solo post: Director's cut When measuring the outcomes of an intervention, organizations usually observe and quantify immediate or short-term results. For example, marketing could drive additional traffic, a discounted shipping rate could increase conversion rates, a price promotion or a loyalty program could drive sales. In most cases, however, these interventions would have effects that materialize over a longer period of time. After being exposed to a promotion, customers may become more price sensitive and start buying cheaper products or strategically time their purchases to take advantage of the next promotion. In general, companies will not conduct multi-month (or even multi-year) experiments to compare alternatives and find the option that optimizes long-term return on investment (ROI). Decisions must be made in the absence of long-term results. To address this shortcoming, in 2019, Susan Athey et al. published a paper on combining short...