Defining the Domain of Perceived Environmental Uncertainty: An Exploratory Study of Senior Marketing Executives

Abstract

At the very core of Marketing Information Systems (MkIS) design is the identification of the marketing information needs of decision-makers. Information needs can be defined as the user specifications of information characteristics involved in information seeking, and refer to those qualities of information perceived by managers to be 'useful' to facilitate their decision-making. Building upon previous qualitative research examining the information needs of senior marketing executives, the authors present the findings of a second qualitative research phase seeking to define the domain of one construct reported by Ashill and Jobber (1999), namely Perceived Environmental Uncertainty. The results, based on interviews with 20 senior marketing executives suggest that this construct may be multidimensional and associated with three different types of uncertainty conditions.