Limitations of PIMS
* Key market-share variable is sensitive to product-market definition
* Other variables depend on subjective judgments
* Inherent limitations of cross-section analysis
* Sample biased toward larger firms that are industry leaders
PIMS is an effort to examine the profit performance of different marketing strategies. It seeks to quantify the behavior of factors that influence business performance.
PIMS started as an internal project at General Electric (GE) in 1960 to explain and predict operating performance, eventually the PIMS effort led to a regression model that explained a substantial variation in return on investment (ROI).
Development of the PIMS model continued at GE, then at Harvard Business School and the Marketing Science Institute. At these latter institutions, the PIMS database was expanded to include other corporations.
In 1975, the Strategic Planning Institute (SPI) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a nonprofit corporation governed by the member companies, was formed to manage the PIMS project.