Chapter 4, Problem 1QA

Summary Introduction

To determine: Marketing information system and the type of information it includes.

Introduction: A Marketing information system is a type of management information system which is drafted to support the decision making of marketing.

Answer to Problem 1QA

Marketing information system is a type of management information system supported by different type of components such as competitive intelligence, internal data, and marketing research.

Explanation of Solution

Given information: Marketing information system and the types of information it provide to the company.

Collecting data, its distribution, analysis, storage, interpretation, and dissemination of market’s information from external and internal sources to the marketers on continuous and regular basis is called as Marketing Information System.

The information related to marketing is distributed to the marketers so that they can take efficient decision for the operations of the marketing. For example- Packaging, pricing, development of new products etc

Marketing information system includes following components-

→ Internal data- The companies collect the data of their customer for their internal operations. These operations include maintaining the information about the customer’s interest, their gender, products that they purchase, their location and purchase behavior. The companies may also collect the data of their successors.

→ Competitive Intelligence- Competitive intelligence is the better understanding of an organization or the company who are in the competition and the understanding of market dynamics. This includes product information, pricing strategy, penetration and market share, messaging and composition positioning, loss or win analysis.

→ Marketing research- Marketing research is the process of analyzing data collected from the market on the basis of market opportunity, new products, and customer’s purchase behavior. Companies also identify the problem and try to solve it with the data collected from the market after research. Companies include the recommendation of their customers and other marketing entities while solving the market problem. The factors which are considered while research are environmental factors, marketing, advertising, and promotions of the products, corporate research etc