I think when the guy mentioned he studied past failures it's prime example of crunching the numbers and applying theories without actual common sense. "Ah yes, I wouldn't buy a Gucci bag for $999 but for $995 it's a deal done" you don't need PhD in economics to realize this is stupid.

The fact that the second part of his comment is full of acronyms "we ASDFed the GHIJ over KLMN" suggest it's yet another case of a manager completely detached from reality of average consumer.