In the early 1980's, although Coke was still leading soft drink, it was only losing market share to Pepsi. For years, Pepsi had successfully mounted the “Pepsi Challenge”, a series of televised taste test showing that consumers preferred the sweeter taste of Pepsi. Coca cola had to do something to stop the loss of its market share, and the solution appeared to be a change in Coke's taste. Coca-Cola began the largest new product research project in the company's history. It spent $4 million on more than two years research before settling on a new formula. It conducted some 200,000 taste test on the final formula.
In order to produce superior value and satisfaction for costumers, companies need information at every turn. Good products and marketing programs begin with thorough understanding of consumer needs and wants. Companies also need an abundance information on competitors, resellers and other actors and forces in the marketplace.
Marketers are viewing information not only as an input for making a better decision but also as an important strategic asset and marketing tool. Competitor will not be able to duplicate the company's information and intellectual capital.
In today's more rapidly changing environments, manager need up to date information to make timely high quality decisions. Companies must design effective marketing information systems that give managers the right information, in the right form, at the right time to help them make better marketing decisions. A good marketing information systems consist of people, equipment, and procedures o gather, sort analyze, evaluate and distribute needed, timely, and accurate information to marketing decision makers.
Assessing Marketing Information Needs
The marketing information system primarily serves the company's marketing and other managers. However, it may also provide information to external partners, such as suppliers or marketing services agencies.
A good marketing information system balances the information users would like to have against what they really need and what is feasible to offer. The marketing information system must monitor the marketing environment in order to provide decision makers with information they should have to make key marketing decisions. Sometimes the company cannot provide the needed information, either because it is not available or because of marketing information system limitations. For example, a brand manager might want to know how competitors will change their advertising budgets next year and how these will affect industry market share.
The cost of obtaining, processing, storing and delivering information can mount quickly. The company must decide whether the benefit of having additional information are worth the cost of providing it, and both value and cost are often hard to assess. Marketers should not assume that additional information will always be worth obtaining. They should weigh carefully the cost of additional information against the benefit resulting from it.
Obtaining Marketing Information
Marketers can obtain the needed information from internal data, marketing intelligence, and marketing research.
Internal data: Many companies build extensive internal data base. Internal data base is electronic collections of information obtained from data source within the company. Information in the database can come from many sources, for example, detailed record of sales, cost and cash flow from accounting department and costumer demographics, psychographics, and buying behavior from marketing department. Research studies done for one department may provide useful information for other departments.
Internal database usually can be accessed more quickly and cheaply than other information sources, but they also present some problems. Because it was collected for other purpose, it may be incomplete or in the wrong form for making marketing decisions. They ages quickly and keeping the database current requires a major effort.
The database information must be well integrated and readily accessible through user friendly interface so that managers can find it easily and use it effectively.
Marketing intelligence: Marketing intelligence is a systematic collection and analysis of publicly available information about competitors and development in the marketing environment.
Much intelligence can be collected from people inside the rival companies. For example, while talking with a Kodak copier salesperson, a Xerox technician learned that the sales person was being trained to service Xerox products. With this information, Xerox design a total satisfaction guarantee, which allow copier returns for any reason as long as Xerox did the servicing.
The company can also obtain intelligence information from suppliers, resellers, and and key consumers, or it can get good information by observing competitors. For example, one company regularly checks out competitors' parking lots, full lots might indicate plenty of work and prosperity.
Competitor may reveal intelligence information through their annual reports, business publication, trade-show exhibits, press release, advertisement and web site. For example, Allied signal's web site provides revenue, goals and reveal the company's production defect rate along with its plan to improve it.
Marketing Research: In addition to information about competitor and environmental happenings, marketers often need formal studies (marketing research) of specific situations. Marketing research is a systematic design, collection, analysis and reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an organization. Marketing research is very useful in a wide variety of situations. For example, marketing research can help marketers assess market potential and market share.
