What is marketing information system

According to Kotler’s () ” A marketing information system is a continuing and interacting structure of people, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analysis, evaluate, and distribute pertinent, timely and accurate information for use by marketing decision makers to improve their marketing planning, implementation, and control.” However, American Marketing Association define marketing information system is a sort of actions and technique for the standard, designed collected works, analysis and management of information which helps to take marketing decisions in an organisation.

Moreover, marketing information system is a computerised system. It helps to gathered and organised the flow of information to allow and maintain the marketing activities of an organisation such as product development or improvement, pricing decision, packaging, distribution, media selection for marketing product and promotion of products.

Furthermore, Smith, Brien and Stafford (1968) cited in Piercy & Evans () define marketing information system is a structure, working together complex of persons, technology and planned actions to create an systematic flow of relevant information, gathered from internal and external organisational sources that leads to take the decision of marketing management levels.

A marketing information system (MkIS) consists of people, technology and procedures that help to collect data, sort data, analyse data, assess data and distribute required, timely and exact information to leads management to marketing decision making. Figure 1 shows that the MkIS starts and ends with information consumers such as marketing managers, internal and external partners, and other marketing related department who need information that insist to take marketing decisions (Armstrong et al., ****).

First of all, MsIS cooperates with information users to assess the information requires. Secondly, it builds up required information from internal organisational databases, marketing intelligence actions and marketing research. After that it helps users to analyse the gathered information to come to the solution for marketing decisions and managing good relationship with customers. At last, the MkIS shared the marketing information with managers that helps them to utilise it in their decision-making. It is a high-quality systematic way to take decision in marketing (Armstrong et al., ****).

Figure 1: Marketing Information System

Source:

Internal record or internal reporting systems: All organisations which is running in operation for a period of time they do have huge business information. Though, this information is sometimes leftovers without utilisations because it is complicated to divide into categories and it is happening all over the small business or large business activities. Normally, the business information is categories according to their characteristics such as financial, manufacture, workforce, marketing, inventory and logistical data etc. Therefore all sort of information are integrated with each other but industrialist of various departments does not often see the benefit of this data. Apparently, decision makers also fail to realise the importance of this data and they ignored to ask for this data (www.fao.org).

The internal records is play a vital role in marketing decisions making such as orders received, stockholdings and sales invoices. This internal record sometimes used by marketing managers. This little numbers of recorded information is able to generate a great deal of information that can drive business system. Therefore, company can ensure a good customer service by the cooperation of current internal information and also able to fulfil the consumer demands within a period of time (www.fao.org).

Marketing research system: Marketing research means to collect positive information about the consumer demands and it helps to take necessary step to fulfil the demands in advance to get the competitive advantage. In several cases, it shows that information or data is collected in a persistent way to indicate a problem and it can be solved by the suggested technique of study. On the other hand marketing research centres is not work for identify the marketing problem for the company but is constantly keep an eye on the marketing environment. This monitoring system is a continuous process of marketing research studies and gathering data from market doing various survey from customer and analyse the data what step to take to improve the quality of product and increase the customer service (www.fao.org).

For example Starbucks is a chain coffee shop. They are launching new coffee product ‘Starbucks Espresso’. Before merchandise they did a market survey how customer accept that product? And does the quality of Starbucks Espresso meet the customer requirement? Therefore, start giving a free sample of it for the customer to realise the quality of this product. After two or three month survey Starbucks launch their new coffee in market to merchandise. Finally customer are happy to buy ‘Starbucks Espresso’ that is way to get customer satisfaction of new product.

Marketing intelligence systems: Marketing intelligence is not focused in company where marketing research is focused to decision making. A marketing intelligence system is a technique and information source system which is followed by the marketing managers to convert information from the environment and that helps them to take marketing decision. This examining of the economic and business environment can be carried out in a various ways (www.fao.org). They are discusses as follows:

Unfocused scanning: The desirable quality of manager is what s/he reads, hears and watches interpretations that instinct to business decision making and that is became useful for the business development. At the same time as the activities are unfocused and the manager has no definite idea in mind therefore it is not accidental (www.fao.org).

For example KFC is fast food shop running business in UK. But few years ago they find out that due to some community area most of them are Muslim community and they preferred to take halal food. As because of KFC chicken is not halal they are not interested to buy food from KFC. For that reason to catch the target market community people they start Halal KFC shop in some area and there sales increases rapidly in that area compare to other business. It is a good scanning of environment to get the benefit of it.

Semi-focused scanning: In this research system manager is not looking for specific pieces of information. Alternatively he is narrow down the choice of media that is scanned in his mind. For example, the manager of organisation may paying more attention on economic and business publications, and broadcasts etc. for their product marketing, on the other hand he is ignoring or pay not as much of interest to political, scientific or technological media such as electronic advertising on street (www.fao.org).

Informal search: In this system manager will take a reasonably limited and formless step to gathered information for a particular reason. For instance, the marketing manager of a firm in UK bearing in mind to enter the business of importing frozen fish from other country like Bangladesh, India etc. therefore these countries may make informal inquiries to find out the prices and demand levels of frozen and fresh fish. They might use a little structure for this search that managers making inquiries with traders s/he happens to encounter as well as with informal contacts in ministries, international support agencies, with trade associations, importers/exporters etc (www.fao.org).

Formal search: In this system, managers are looking for specific information in organized and structured way. It is a finding of a specific issue. At the same time as this kind of activity may give the idea to share the characteristics of marketing research it is performed by the manager not the professional researcher. Apparently, the scope of the finding is seems to be narrow in scope and far less intensive than marketing research in firms (www.fao.org).

However, marketing intelligence is the area of entrepreneurs and senior managers within a business. It involves them to get up-to-date information by scanning newspaper trade magazines, business journals and reports, economic forecasts and other media. Moreover, it is also creating opportunity to find out customer requirement and fulfil their requirement on time by talking producer and suppliers. Therefore it is a widely informal process of examining and communicating with consumer (www.fao.org).

For example, in GAP Inc. they always scanning the customer mind and taking marketing decision based on the surrounding environment such as in the beginning of winter they offered 30% off all sweaters and cardigan to increase their sales in the competitive market. They know that everyone will shop in the beginning of the winter but customers are more likely to buy product where they got cheap and quality product. Therefore marketing intelligence is very important in marketing decision to increase sales of the company. It is also giving the overall idea about there competitor in competitive market to get competitive advantages.

Marketing decision support models: In MIS there are several models which give the direction to take decision with the help of the research information. Some of these models computerised and some are manual. These models are listed below:

SWOT analysis

Porter’s five force model

PESTLE analysis

Elasticity models (price, income, demand, supply, etc.)

Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) models.

Discounted cash flow.

Linear programming

Spreadsheet ‘what if models’

These and related mathematical, statistical, econometric and financial models are the systematic subsystem of the MIS. The data analysis of these models is very simple; a desktop computer is enough for it (www.fao.org).

SWOT analysis is one of the techniques of marketing decision making. It represents strengths, weakness, opportunities and threatens. Basically with this analysis it can easily identify of the possible benefit of the new product and threaten of this product in competitive market. So, manager can take decision by this analysis.

Benefit of SWOT analysis:

It offers professional managers an effective evaluative technique to help decision making process.

It can highlighted the issues and analyse the issues. So manager can easily identify the problem and that helps to take decision.

All four part of SWOT analysis is helps to analyse a company’s overall strategy or strategy of business units.

It helps to take plan of action of business strategy.

Limitation of SWOT analysis:

It can not give the solution of the problem.

It is unable to give strategic choice of action which is benefited for the company.

Starbucks is one of the best coffee shops in the world. SWOT analysis of Starbucks is given below:

Strengths:

Starbucks Corporation is a profitable organisation. The company generate $9.8 billion revenue in 2009.

It is a world wide largest coffee shop with a reputation for fine products and services. It has almost 17,800 stores in 49 countries.

Starbucks was one of the Fortune top 100 companies to Work for in 2005. The company is a respected employer and providing a good employments opportunity for employees.

It has a strong ethical values and mission statement as follows, “Starbucks is committed to a role of environmental leadership in all facets of our business.”

Weaknesses:

Starbucks has a reputation for new product expansion and vision. But their innovation may fail off due to vulnerable product. For example Starbucks Ugg boots.

Most of the shops of Starbucks are based on United States. Therefore, it is often argued that they require looking for a selection of countries to expand their business link for the purpose of increase business risk.

They are fully dependants with the retail of coffee to get competitive advantages.

Opportunities:

They are keen to take the advantages of opportunity. For example, during 2004 in Santa Monica, California branch the company formed a CD-burning service for customer to create their own music CD.

They are very much innovative with their new products and services like Fair Trade products.

The company having good opportunity to expand business in global operations. For example, India and Pacific Rim nations are beginning to come forward for new coffee market.

To increase their customer service opportunity to co-branding with other manufacturer of food and drink.

Threats:

In competitive market there are chance to lose brand image with different coffee brand of different company.

Increases costs of coffee and dairy products are threaten for the business.

Many new competitor and new copy cat brand in the market are the main threats of Starbucks.

PESTLE analysis:

PESTLE model represent political, economic, sociological, technological, legal, environmental. It is a brainstorm method to do research surrounding environment. It is very good technique of marketing research and nice marketing decision making. The key factor of each terms are discuss as follows:

Political: It is covered all political situation which is related to business for example tax policy, employment laws, environmental regulations, trade restrictions and reform, tariffs and political stability (www.cipd.co.uk).

Economic: It is covered the economic condition in organisation such as economic growth/decline, interest rates, exchange rates and inflation rate, wage rates, working hours, cost of living etc (www.cipd.co.uk).

Sociological: It is covered the social environments of organisation like cultural standards and expectations, health consciousness, population growth rate, age distribution, global warming etc (www.cipd.co.uk).

Technological: Technology is most important for organisation. It is vital for marketing purpose and operational purpose. Therefore technology is vital for organisational product and service developments. For example mobile phone technology, web blogs, social networking sites etc (www.cipd.co.uk).

Legal: It is covered all employment legislation of organisation. For example access materials, resources, imports/exports, taxation etc (www.cipd.co.uk).

Environmental: It is covered all ecological and environmental issues (www.cipd.co.uk).

Advantage of PESTLE analysis:

It is easy structure.

It providing understanding of broader business environment.

It gives confident of the development of exterior and planned thoughts.

It ensuring the organisation to spot business opportunities and take advantage of them fully.

Disadvantages of PESTLE analysis:

It is easy to use limited data due to over simplify the amount of data used for decisions.

It need to be carried out on a regular basis to make the process effective

It is time consuming and costly for access to quality and external data sources.

The data used in the analysis is sometimes based on assumptions. So the result may be sometimes bad.

Lego is one of the largest toy shops in the world. PESTLE Analysis of Lego shop is given below:

Political: The company process of repositioning started in 2006 and it will carry on in the coming years. The production is done out of the country. If there is any political variation in these countries it can directly affect the performance of the Lego group which can hamper the relocation strategy. Correspondingly if there is any trade restriction or tariff or government interference it can positively or negatively affect the Lego group.

Economic: There is cost connected with relocation, difference in exchange rates, interest rates, inflation rate and economic growth in different countries which can control the operations of the Lego group. Low cost is achieved by outsourcing labour intensive jobs.

Social: Their global workforce of 7000 people so the corporate strategy requires managing the universal employees. There is difference in work ethics, HR Laws. There is cultural dissimilarity as there are people from different countries. The organisational structure and management which are contributing to their strategic choice, however new ideas can always be added advantage for the organisation.

Technological: They have used technological development to get competitive advantage. Use of modern mechanism in warehousing, correctness of production process, integration of new technology backed by stable R/d has proved productive to the organisation.

Environmental: Toys are made from plastic and plastic cannot be recycled. There is a rising discouragement for use of plastic. If you build a column of about 40,000,000,000 Lego bricks it would reach the moon. At the recent COP15 – UN Climate change conference held at Denmark there has been emphasis on use of renewable energy resources. KYOTO Protocol is emphasis on the reduction of CO2 emission.

Legal: Relocation consequences, different discrimination laws, consumer laws, anti trust laws, employment laws, and health and safety laws. So Lego has to abide by these several legislations that may affect its organisational process.