Capturing Marketing Insights

COMPONENTS OF A MODERN
MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEM
• The major responsibility for identifying significant marketplace
changes falls to the company’s marketers.
• They must be the trend trackers and opportunity seekers.
• Every manager in an organization needs to observe the outside
environment, marketers have the following advantages:
– They have disciplined methods for collecting information.
_ They spend more time interacting with customers and observing
competition.
– Some firms have developed marketing information systems that provide
management with rich detail about buyer wants, preferences, and
behavior.
– Marketers also have extensive information about how consumption
patterns vary across countries.
•
 Cont..
– A marketing information system (MIS) consists of:
• People.
• Equipment.
• Procedures to: Gather ,Sort, Analyze, Evaluate and
distribute needed, timely, and accurate information to
marketing decision makers.
– A marketing information system is developed from:
• Internal company records.
• Marketing intelligence activities.
• Marketing research.
– The company’s marketing information system should be: what
managers think they need, what managers really need, and
what is economically feasible.
 Internal Records and Marketing
Intelligence

• Marketing mangers rely on internal

reports on orders, prices, costs,
inventory levels, and so on. By
analyzing this information, they can
spot important opportunities and
problems.
 Order-to-Payment Cycle

• The heart of the internal records systems

is the order-to-payment cycle.
• Sales representatives, dealers, and customers
send orders to the firm.
• The sales department prepares invoices and
transmits copies to various departments.
• Shipped items are accompanied by shipping and
billing documents that are sent to the various
departments.
• Today companies need to perform these steps
quickly and accurately.
 Cont..
• An increasing number of companies are
using the Internet and extranets to
improve the speed, accuracy, and
efficiency of the order-to-payment cycle.
 Sales Information Systems

• Marketing managers need timely and

accurate reports on current sales.
• Companies must carefully interpret the sales
data so as not to get the wrong signals.
• Technological gadgets are revolutionizing sales
information systems and allowing
representatives to have up-to-the second
information.
 Cont..
• Databases, Data Warehouses, and Data-Mining
• Today companies organize information in
databases—customer databases, product databases,
salesperson databases—and then combine data
from the different databases.
• Companies warehouse these data for easy accessibly to
decision makers.
• By hiring analysts skilled in sophisticated statistical
methods, companies can “mine” the data and garner
fresh insights into:
– Neglected customer segments.
– Recent customer trends.
– Other useful information.
 Marketing Intelligence System

• The internal records systems supplies results

data, but the marketing intelligence system supplies
happenings data.
• A marketing intelligence system is a set of procedures
and sources managers use to obtain everyday
information about developments in the marketing
environment.
• Marketing managers collect marketing intelligence by:
• Reading books, newspapers, and trade publications.
• Talking to customers, suppliers, and distributors.
 Cont..
• Meeting with other company managers.
• A company can take several steps to improve the quality of its
marketing intelligence:
• A company can train and motivate the sales force to sport and
report new developments.
• A company can motivate distributors, retailers, and other
intermediaries to pass along important intelligence.
• A company can network externally.
• A company can take advantage of government data resources.
• A company can purchase information from outside suppliers.
• A company can use online customer feedback systems to
collect competitive intelligence.
 ANALYZING THE
MACROENVIRONMENT
• Successful companies recognize and respond
profitably to unmet needs and trends.
• Needs and Trends
• Enterprising individuals and companies manage
to create new solutions to unmet needs.
• A fad is “unpredictable, short-lived, and without social,
economic, and political significance.”
• A trend is a direction or sequence of events that has
some momentum and durability.
• Trends are more predictable and durable than fads.
• A trend reveals the shape of the future and provides
many opportunities.
 Cont..
• Mega trends have been described as “large
social, economic, political, and technological
changes [that] are slow to form, and once in
place, they influence us for some time—between
seven and ten years, or longer.
• Trends and megatrends merit close attention.
• To help marketers’ spot cultural shifts that might
bring new opportunities or threats, several firms
offer social-cultural forecasts
 Cont..
• Identifying the Major Forces
• Companies and their suppliers, marketing
intermediaries, customers, competitors, and
publics, all operate in an macroenvironment
of forces and trends that shape opportunities
and pose threats.
• These forces represent “noncontrollables” to
which the company must monitor and respond.
 Cont..
• Within the rapidly changing global picture, the
firm must monitor six major forces:
– Demographic.
– Economic.
– Social-cultural.
– Natural.
– Technological.
– Political-legal.
• Marketers must pay attention to the interactions
of these forces, as these will lead to new
opportunities and threats.