Saturday, January 03, 2009

Still calculating

As previously distinguished, Av1 is the value of the telling of the anecdote for the teller, which could be measured in goods or services (as far as they can be quantified) accruing to the teller. Av2 is the measure of the ability of the anecdote to change the outcome of something, in a choice model, let's say. So the value of Av2 is measured by the change (quantifiable) that it produces, which does not necessarily accrue to the teller.

And as tentatively proposed below, if Av1 = QbCx - C(x-1), where

Av1 = Anecdotal Value (for the teller)
Qb = Quantified benefit (say the price of a dinner bought for you)
Cx = Circulation (number of times you tell the story successfully)
C (x-1) = the number past which you didn't get any benefit from telling the story.

and
Av2 = Qb (my assumption is that there is very little benefit over time)

then AV = Av1 + Av2. Or something like this. I feel like I need some greek letters to make it more substantial. Maybe a sigma.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

“Knowing that our own individual judgment is worthless, we endeavour to fall back on the judgment of the rest of the world which is perhaps better informed. That is, we endeavour to conform with the behavior of the majority on average. The psychology of a society of individuals each of whom is endeavouring to copy the others leads to what we may strictly term a conventional judgment” (Keynes
1937, p. 114)

Or perhaps we console ourselves with a story -- an anecdote

Anonymous said...

There is this marketing Guru Seth Godin who writes; The new rule of marketing is that it doesn't matter if something is actually better or faster or more efficient. What matters is whether consumers believe the story. Godin teaches readers to create a story that fits the consumer's world view, a story they will intuitively embrace and share with friends. I think Marketing and PR people would be interested in understanding Anecdotal Value