Developing and using a data base marketing system

Abstract

Much of the literature regarding the monitoring and control of internal marketing functions has dealt with various reporting techniques designed to focus on such issues as the evaluation of specific channel members [e.g., l] or on the control of selected marketing activities [e.g., 2-41. The research orientation of these authors has, by the nature of their objectives, been narrowly targeted at resolving specific problems with specific analytical models. More recently, Jaworski [5] in a broadly based theory article suggested an approach intended to integrate the firm’s environmental context, its internal controls, and the consequences of those controls in a broadly defined marketing information system. While a series of control theory hypotheses were proposed, the article was not intended to supply an actual applications oriented structure which could be used by a business or industrial marketing practitioner. A significant body of research within the context of industrial market segmentation also bears indirectly on aspects of the internal decision support system to be pre-