Assessing Marketing Information
Needs (p 100)
The marketing information system primarily serves the company’s marketing and other
managers. However, it may also provide information to external partners, such as suppliers,
resellers, or marketing services agencies. For example, Walmart’s RetailLink system gives
key suppliers access to information on everything from customers’ buying patterns and store
inventory levels to how many items they’ve sold in which stores in the past 24 hours.5
Agood MIS balances the information users would like to have against what they really
need and what is feasible to offer. The company begins by interviewing managers to find out
what information they would like. Some managers will ask for whatever information they
can get without thinking carefully about what they really need. Too much information can
be as harmful as too little.
Other managers may omit things they ought to know, or they may not know to ask for
some types of information they should have. For example, managers might need to know
about surges in favorable or unfavorable consumer discussions about their brands on blogs
or online social networks. Because they do not know about these discussions, they do not
think to ask about them. The MIS must monitor the marketing environment to provide decision
makers with information they should have to better understand customers and make
key marketing decisions.
Sometimes the company cannot provide the needed information, either because it is not
available or because of MIS limitations. For example, a brand manager might want to know
how competitors will change their advertising budgets next year and how these changes
will affect industry market shares. The information on planned budgets probably is not
available. Even if it is, the company’s MIS may not be advanced enough to forecast resulting
changes in market shares.
Finally, the costs of obtaining, analyzing, storing, and delivering information can quickly
mount. The company must decide whether the value of insights gained from additional information
is worth the costs of providing it, and both value and cost are often hard to assess.