Marketing's Contribution to the Profitability of Greek Enterprises During the Economic Crisis.

Abstract

The state of economic disposition that Greece has been since 2009 is a focal point in Economic science for further research. Marketing is a function of a great importance for companies’ prosperity. Also Alay Kohli and Bernard Jaworski proved in their paper that the correlation of Marketing and profit is positive and stronger in a “weak” economy. This paper aims to examine the relationship of Marketing Expenses with the Total Sales and with the Gross Profit along with the changes that may happen in the period of Crisis in Greece. The methodology of the study employs the judgmental sampling because not every company provides the needed financial information. The relationship of the variables examined with the linear regression, mainly because this method gives insights in the contribution of the independent variable in the variability of the dependent and also gives the quantitative relationship between the variability among them. The sample of this study consists of 140 from the total of 254 companies of the Athens Exchange Stock. The findings of this paper shows that marketing is the main factor that determines the profitability of the companies and this relationship tends to be stronger in the crisis period in contrast to Return On Marketing Investments ratio that gradually decreased for the same period, this fact reveals that companies failed to change their Marketing Mix so to adapt with all changes that the economic crisis brought in the consumer behavior. For the investors decisions this paper having examined the relationship between Marketing Expenses and Gross Profit and the variance of the ROMI ratio for 2005 to 2011 advices them to be more careful when ROMI changes dramatically from one year to another, marketing demands time for consumers to be acquaint with.