As a market researcher, I am always curious about the impact of marketing activities and purchase behavior. In short I wonder if our activities cause people to purchase our products and services. The notion of causal analysis goes back some time in the area of social, economic and business causal research<\/a>. Our colleagues in the physical and life sciences have a much easier time asserting that X causes Y. Such is not the case in the business world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With that said the advent of web analytics and marketing automation has moved us closer to being able to say, with the conviction that spending a dollar on one activity causes consumers to respond in a predictable way. Yet as my early mentor Dr. Nabil Razzouk would say, \u201cat best we can predict some of the behavior some of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t