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Marketing Information Systems

15 January, 2016 - 09:18

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  1. Describe the components of a marketing information system and each component’s purpose.
  2. Explain the situations in which marketing research should be used versus market intelligence.
  3. Describe the limitations of market intelligence and its ethical boundaries.
  4. Explain when marketing research should and should not be used.

A certain amount of marketing information is being gathered all the time by companies as they engage in their daily operations. When a sale is made and recorded, this is marketing information that’s being gathered. When a sales representative records the shipping preferences of a customer in a firm’s customer relationship management (CRM) system, this is also marketing information that’s being collected. When a firm gets a customer complaint and records it, this too is information that should be put to use. All this data can be used to generate consumer insight. However, truly understanding customers involves not just collecting quantitative data (numbers) related to them but qualitative data, such as comments about what they think.