Marketing and decision making

11.1 Making marketing decisions

In most firms, marketing is at the heart of the decisions taken by the directors. Not marketing in the sense of price cuts and promotions, but marketing in the sense of analysing growth trends and the competitive struggle within the firm's existing markets, and decisions about which markets the firm wishes to develop in future.

Marketing decision-making: the marketing model:

Marketing decisions are hard to make, because there are so many uncertaincies. The figure above is one of the most effective ways of ensuring a decision is well thought through. 

The intention is to ensure that the strategy decided upon is the most effective at achieving the marketing objectives. In this process, MR is likely to be very important. It is crucial for dindig out the background data and again for testing the hypotheses. Test marketing may also be used. This is a way of checking whether the MR results are accurate, before finally committing the firm to an expensive national marketing campaign. 

The marketing model is the way to decide how to turn a marketing objective into a strategy.

11.2 Developments in technology and marketing decisions

Profitable or not, the wind is blowing strongly in the direction of digital marketing. In 2013 UK business spending on social media advertising rose by 71% to £588m, eith the growth in mobile advertising being the most dynamic. For the market as a whole UK spending on mobile digital advertising is forecast to overtske spending on TV advertising airtime by 2016, partly at the cost of newspapers and magazines.

11.3 The use of social media 

There are three importsnt benefits to firms from this form of digital marketing:

• The targeting can be especially tightly targeted at the precise tastes and habits of each individual, including nothing changes in their behaviour such as when they move from home to university.
• Traditionally…