Question

Many managers and executives are too rushed to read long journal articles, but they are eager to stay current in their fields. Assume your boss has asked you to help him stay abreast of research in his field. He asks you to submit to him one executive summary every month on an article of interest.

Your Task. In your field of study, select a professional journal, such as the Journal of Management. Using ProQuest, Factiva, EBSCO, or some other database, look for articles in your target journal. Select an article that is at least five pages long and is interesting to you. Write an executive summary in a memo format. Include an introduction that might begin with As you requested, I am submitting this executive summary of . . . . Identify the author, article title, journal, and date of publication. Explain what the author intended to do in the study or article. Summarize three or four of the most important findings of the study or article. Use descriptive, or “talking,” headings rather than functional headings. Summarize any recommendations made. Your boss would also like a concluding statement indicating your reaction to the article. Address your memo to Marcus E. Fratelli.

Answer 1

Performance implications of deploying marketing analytics

TO: Marty Latham, Vice President (Marketing Department).

From: ABC, Market Analytics Consultant

Date: November 21, 2015

Subject: Performance implications of deploying marketing analytics – an executive summary

As requested by you, I am submitting the following executive summary of journal which describes the performance implications of deploying market analytics. This article; published in the year 2013 in International Journal of Research in Marketing by Elsevier Publications, is a research work of three authors, Frank Germann, Gary L. Lilien and Arvind Rangaswamy.

Deploying marketing analytics in the marketing efforts have a huge potential to produce various organizational results. However, there is not a convincing consensus among the C-level executives about the deployment of marketing analytics in their organizations; and this trend is spread across various industries. While performing the cost-benefit analysis of deployment of marketing analytics as a part of their marketing strategies, many top executives are skeptical about its success and benefits. One of the prominent aspects of the research journal was that the authors conducted the primary research and surveyed as many as 212 top executives of Fortune 1000 companies across the globe, in order to give the useful insight that companies can attain favorable, useful and apparently, the sustainable performance and business success after the deployment of marketing analytics in their organizational performances. The article, in addition to this provides the various antecedents of marketing analytics deployment in the organizations. One can understand the increasing popularity of marketing analytics that the recent Google keyword search got more than 500, 000 hits for the ‘marketing analytics’.

Marketing analytics, in its simple definition can be stated as: model-supported scientific and technology enabled approach to use and harness the market and customer data so as to enhance the marketing and customer centric decision making capability. Since the modern organizations are under the influence of various environmental and technological changes like harnessing a huge amount of data, high powered and fast paced IT infrastructure, increasing pressure on executives to produce the high return on investments and highly sophisticated customers, it can be imperative to deploy the marketing analytics in order to make the business more profitable and enhancing the customer retention rate. However, the authors strongly feel that there continues to be a skeptical and doubt towards the ‘rational data based approach’ towards marketing and customer management.

In its research paper, the authors find out that the skepticism regarding the marketing analytics is still prevalent; as outs of 587 C-level top executives and managers of the largest corporations showcased that only 10% of the total of them use the marketing analytics on the regular basis. A variant of marketing analytics, called as Predictive analytics is just used by 16% of the 160 top business leaders (which were surveyed in a research).

The performance implications of deploying marketing analytics are both for the large multinational corporations to medium sized businesses; and even the startups from the e-commerce space are increasingly using the marketing analytics. Giving several examples of real world case studies, the authors made a strong pitch, directing towards the advocacy of deploying marketing analytics. For example, Rhenania – a mail oder company with its headquarters in Germany used the data driven customer focused marketing analytics to answer the most fundamental question: how frequently, when, where and who to send most important and customized catalogs to be sent by its company mail department. The result of using marketing analytics were exceptionally well: the profit of the company became four times and the company was able to expand its customer base by 55% in the first year of its data model implementation program.

Another important finding of the paper was the suggestion made by the authors that deployment of marketing analytics can significantly enhance the firm’s capability to identify and assess the various alternatives and courses of action. For example, Marriott Corporation ran out of the downtown location in the decade of 1980. The company implemented a variant of marketing analytics, called as Conjoint analysis to identify the hotels location outside the downtown regions in order to push the business growth. The result was: Marriott Courtyard; one of the highly successful marketing initiative of Marriott which is a multibillion dollar business now. In another example of National Academics Press, the organization used the marketing analytics to retain customers and understand the consumer preferences.

Overall, the authors suggested three important implications of the marketing analytics deployment which the firms can benefit: a) the greater and deeper the deployment of marketing analytics, the better the performance of the firms, b) the higher the level of the competitive rivalry in the industry, the higher the benefit potential of marketing analytics for the firm and c) the faster the changes in the consumer preferences and sophistication of customers, the better the marketing analytics can provide the benefits.

References

Germann, F., Lilien, G. L., & Rangaswamy, A. (2013). Performance implications of deploying marketing analytics. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 30(2), 114-128.

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