The measure of relative rather than absolute impact raises another issue; that of market penetration of marketing science knowledge and tools. Marketing science tools and the articles on which they are based may be used in a wide variety of marketing decision making situations . A more appropriate benchmark might perhaps be, “Of all the situations to which these tools could have provided insight, in what per cent are the tools actually being applied?” Our sense is that the number is low. If this is indeed the case, it is presumably hard for us to argue that the marketing science tools currently in the market are in any way “standard” approaches to marketing and the measurement of its effect.
Overall, we hope that we have identified the basis for a continued and richer study of the marketing science value chain.