Performance Measurement of Marketing Function Practices and Management Control Challenges

Abstract

Assessing marketing performance is an increasingly important task for managers and various stakeholders in the competitive business environment. The performance measures in marketing arguably have following functions from management control perspective: (1) As tool for measuring performance of marketing management function; (2) Marketing performance measures as the objectives of the business; (3)Mechanism for motivation and control and (4) Tool for making marketing strategy decision and implementation. This paper reviews the research in the area of marketing performance measurement and the trends thereof in marketing performance measurement practices. Further it describes various measures of marketing performance, namely customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, brand equity, return on investment (ROI) on marketing and its limitation in fulfilling its function in the prevalent business circumstances. Some cases in Indian context are decorated along with the result of a survey on business performance measurement practices of 38 top-notch companies of India. This paper written from management control perspective concludes by discussing the current challenges and perspectives for marketing performance measurement.