Marketing audits and auditing: Diagnosis through intervention

Abstract

The marketing audit has a long and distinguished provenance as a diagnostic device in marketing planning. Indeed, as any good marketing student will tell you, the marketing audit should be the starting‐point for any considered course of managerial action in marketing. Yet, in practice there is often confusion about how to conduct a marketing audit to good effect. This paper argues that confusion does not arise out of uncertainty about what to do, for there is a wealth of accessible literature setting out the steps. Rather, this confusion is seen to be a product of an implicit bias towards means rather than ends in the existing literature. This bias manifests itself in a clear emphasis on the content of marketing audits, i.e. the checklists and questionnaires which facilitate diagnosis. However, the purpose of the marketing audit is not merely to diagnose, but to facilitate collective action in the light of that diagnosis. Thus, if the end of the marketing audit is learning and change, then the auditing pr...