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It has become increasingly important for small to medium sized enterprise (SME) retailers to stand out in the current marketplace. Branding in SMEs is a growing area of academic interest, although the majority of studies have been based in the manufacturing sector. This study seeks to develop a framework of the characteristics, processes and dynamics of SME retailers. A qualitative research study was carried out with SME owner managers (OMs) over a period of 15 months. The findings extend the understanding of branding in SMEs in a number of ways. Firstly, it is found that SME retailers take a cautious approach to brand management, seeking to build loyalty, networks and relationships. Secondly, the holistic nature of SME retail branding presents a challenge to OMs who are resource-constrained. Thirdly, the soft, colloquial and intuitive approaches to brand equity appraisal are evident. Brand marketing is focused on word of mouth, which has implications for how OMs operationalise the brand around store experiences. Finally, the influence of the OM on branding decisions is clear. The key findings are discussed in relation to the retail context of the study, the centricity of the OMs in SME branding and entrepreneurial brand management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors introduce and examine a new marketing concept that a small set of leading firms has begun to adopt: marketing doctrine. Marketing doctrine refers to a firm’s unique principles, distilled from its experiences, which provide firm-wide guidance on market-facing choices. As such, marketing doctrine provides a firm-wide common approach to decision making. Importantly, marketing doctrine helps a firm address the classic consistency–flexibility conundrum by providing high-level guidance to all decision makers in the firm (thus ensuring consistency) but not specifying execution details (thus allowing for local flexibility). Across three samples, the authors explore the concept using a discovery-oriented, theories-in-use approach with 35 executives from several industries. This article makes four contributions. First, it offers a parsimonious definition of the marketing doctrine construct and contrasts it with related constructs. Second, it offers insight into how firms can develop marketing doctrine. Third, it develops a conceptual model that identifies the antecedents and consequences of marketing doctrine use. Finally, the authors explore the moderating effects of three unpredictable environments (competitive intensity, market turbulence, and structural flux) on the marketing doctrine use–performance relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential for profitably distributing products to previously underserved "base-of-the- pyramid" (BOP) markets as a means of poverty alleviation has received growing interest within the management field. However, such business models often struggle with the agency costs that arise between the firm and local sales agents as the institutions and infrastructure in BOP markets make traditional contractual and monitoring mechanisms difficult and expensive to employ. We present the results of two complementary studies which were both conducted with salespeople in rural Guatemala. The first study employed a quasi-experimental field-study combined with in-depth interviews, while the second study was a laboratory experiment. The results of the studies suggest that identity-based mechanisms can potentially mitigate agency costs through a positive identity spillover effect in multiproduct settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the relationship between strategic type and development of distinctive marketing, market-linking, technology, and information technology (IT) capabilities to implement innovation strategy. They hypothesize that prospectors must build technical and IT capabilities, whereas defenders develop market-linking and marketing capabilities. The authors collect data from 709 firms across the United States, Japan, and China. They find support for their capability hypotheses, as well as for some of their cross-national hypotheses that are based on cultural and business environment differences among the three countries. In particular, they find support for the hypotheses that Japanese firms have greater technology and IT capabilities than U.S. firms of the same strategic type. They conclude with implications for management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multinational corporations' (MNCs') control over their foreign operations plays an important role in implementing their global marketing strategy. In the past, transaction cost analysis and bargaining power theory have been widely cited to explain the degree of control MNCs exert over their foreign operations. However, research explicitly combining these two perspectives has been limited. To address the gap in the literature, the authors present a joint model that combines the two alternative theories to explain MNCs' control, and they compare their relative explanatory power. Using primary survey data, they perform an empirical test of the relative explanatory power of these two theories. The results suggest that three factors, two drawn from bargaining power theory and one from transaction cost analysis, are key factors in explaining MNCs' degree of control over their foreign operations. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay tries to show how the inflation of marketing panaceas over the past 20 years has failed to calm the conflict between our discipline and consumers. Quite the contrary, it has had more of an incendiary effect because of its tendency to try to renew and regenerate itself by shamelessly appropriating referentials that go well beyond what is traditionally associated with the market sphere. The end result is that consumers have developed a new type of resistance to marketing approaches, one that will require second order types of changes in our discipline. Some of the seeds for this change can be found in the most recent marketing panaceas, which have been presented (and maybe conceptualised) using two ideas: 'market with' and 'societing'. The present essay does not aim to produce a new great theory of marketing, nor does it offer a new paradigm. It merely tries to stimulate reflection about which modes of thinking might help today's world to avoid marketing fundamentalism and colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines several advantages of using structural modeling for policy evaluations and some of the challenges presented by marketing problems. The authors note that a primary goal of research in marketing is to evaluate and recommend optimal policies for marketing actions. A structural model begins with a view that observed behavior is the outcome of a decision process in which a consumer or firm makes optimal decisions based on a maximization of an objective function subject to resource constraints. All too frequently, researchers in marketing are viewed as net consumers of work from other fields. They also discuss how marketing data are dramatically richer than those in economics in a variety of important ways.

The network concept, as applied to the assessment of media effectiveness, provides a rigorous mathematical tool for relating pertinent variables to a goodness criteria, without sacrificing a desired simplicity in the model. Judgmental weighting to input parameters are presented to the model in the form of proportions of an audience that possess, or will possess, attributes consistent with an ideal target audience. These proportions are then associated by means of a network model resulting in an index in the form of a proportion of an input audience, for each media being considered. The selection of a media can then be considered as a determination of the media reaching the largest, ideal target audience, for a fixed dollar budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study of the international advertising practices of a sample of major United States and European multinationals in the EC. The objective of the study was to investigate the detailed forms of international advertising standardization actually practiced by the sampled companies and establish how widely spread they were across the standardization spectrum in terms of the extent of standardization practiced. Many permutations were found in terms of which executional elements were standardized, the extent to which these elements were standardized and how these practices varied by market. These findings indicate that standardization is a flexible and adaptive policy that can take many forms and that to use the term "modified" to describe the practices of all those companies who neither totally adapt, nor totally standardize, is of limited descriptive value. In other words, these companies should not be categorized as a homogenous group. These findings are important because the rationales behind the practices of these companies are likely to vary as much as the practices themselves. The implications of these findings regarding analysis relating to the benefits of advertising standardization are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of abstracts are presented for articles pertaining to the subject of marketing policy decisions. They include "Coping With Technical, Market, Demographic Changes Requires Careful Product Development Work," "Entrepreneurship: A New Female Frontier" and "New Product Development: Still the Key to Profitability."

The article presents the results of an empirical study on how the marketing researcher perceives himself as a decision maker and how he is perceived by marketing managers. The author looks at the past point of view towards market researchers and some of the faults that have been attributed toward them, such as failure to understand management's point of view, preoccupation with research tools, and obscuring results in complicated jargon. He offers information of how the researchers view themselves, and how opposing views of responsibility sometimes cause conflict with managers. The methodology of the study is presented as well as the results. The author uses these results to form conclusions on the subject.

Many large corporations have had only partial or minimal success with the deceptively simple venture management system for managing product innovations. A field study of 21 venture failures at twelve large multidivisional corporations has revealed a number of causal factors which provide guidelines for more successful venture management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the results of a survey study which investigated the issue of consumer reactions to deceptive marketing research practices. It was found that consumers consistently differentiated the ethical acceptability of various questionable techniques. It is said that there is a temptation in the business community to mistake criticism from the general public for mere distrust of business in general. This view is not supported by the study results, which indicate that consumer perceptions of marketing research practices reflect the existence of consistent ethical standards by which businesses are judged.

This paper explains the basic social process of "personal legitimising" and illustrates its influence on marketing activity. Personal legitimising is the process by which individuals manipulate situations to suit their own agenda. The link between personal legitimising and an organisation's marketing activity was discovered using a grounded theory research strategy within a UK management consulting firm. Personal legitimising has two groupings of behaviour, namely "obstructing existing marketing activity" and "driving new marketing activity". Within the former are the categories of "stigmatising," "pseudo endorsing" and "smokescreening". The latter incorporates the categories of "latching on," "self indulging" and "bragging" The paper has three parts The first explains the basic social process of personal legitimising The second shows how grounded theory methodology was used in this context. The third develops the possible contribution of personal legitimising to the understanding of marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Marketing Department, like others in a manufacturing company, has changed considerably in the last 40 years. Its survival, and even the concept of marketing, have been under threat recently. The reasons for these changes, as the author has seen them, are described. Marketing has tried to be seen as accountable in the same way as other departments but has usually failed. It often now operates as part of a multi-disciplinary team, which means that more people have to understand the Marketing concept, so this needs re-stating to a wider audience. After this, there are serious marketing tasks facing most firms today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many marketing planning and evaluation tasks involve making multicriterion decisions, sometimes involving groups. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), by building a customized hierarchy to represent each problem, leads to the likely identification of all key components affecting decision-making, which contrasts with "seat of the pants" decisions. The most important objectives and alternatives at each hierarchical level are determined through trading off preferences. This can also help reconcile group conflict. Data collection using AHP involves each decision maker determining their relative intensity of preferences by uniquely combining quantitative and qualitative data on to a single scale. To reduce tedium, appropriate software can significantly speed up results. Furthermore, the ability to calculate and present results at each decision level can be used to support, persuade and justify proposed out-comes to top management. This is important for marketing managers fighting for scarce resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To be effective, decision aids for marketing managers should match with the thinking and reasoning processes of the marketing decision makers who use them. The authors take a cognitive approach to problem solving in marketing. They develop a classification of "marketing problem-solving modes" and distinguish four modes: optimizing, reasoning, analogizing, and creating. They also present a typology of what they call "marketing management support systems." In an integrating framework, they then link the four marketing problem-solving modes with the most appropriate marketing management support systems. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of this "demand-side" approach to marketing management support systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Country segmentation has been proposed to assist in marketing strategy decisions for international marketing managers. Such schemes typically consist of grouping or clustering a set of specified countries on the basis of a wide array of macroeconomic variables. The authors focus on the merits of such country classification schemes in gaining an understanding about multinational diffusion patterns. More specifically, they analyze the extent to which countries belonging to the same (different) grouping reveal similar (dissimilar) diffusion patterns. To that end, they compare the results of traditional segmentation approaches with diffusion-based country segments derived for three different consumer durable goods. For the latter, they rely on a recently developed latent-structure methodology, here modified to accommodate the Bass diffusion model, which simultaneously determines the segments and segment-level estimates of the diffusion parameters. They find that the market segments derived from these two approaches differ dramatically and that macro-level variables do not fully explain differences in diffusion patterns across countries. In addition, country segments formed on the basis of diffusion patterns often differ by product. Finally, they discuss some managerial implications and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both marketing managers and consumers must make decisions for which the good and bad outcomes may occur at various points in time in the future. A model of time and outcome valuation (TOV) is developed and shown to expand and complement a variety of marketing models and theories, including exchange models, salesforce motivation models, and decision calculus models. The TOV model is derived from six basic assumptions. From the assumptions a series of managerially important decision phenomena are described, including individual traps and fences, speedup costs, delay charge effects, and future optimism. A series of managerial propositions on the impact of the timing of outcomes on marketing decision making is also developed from the TOV model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decision-making approach integrating information from managerial experience with that provided by marketing models is proposed. The approach suggests that managers should learn to value more those marketing control variable levels that have been linked to favorable changes in performance in order to make more effective and profitable decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author evaluates opposing views of the relation between environmental uncertainty and buying group structure. In an empirical study of buying group structures among airlines and producers of corrugated shipping containers, support is found for the hypothesis that high levels of uncertainty lead to a constriction of decision-making authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturers introducing an industrial product to a foreign market face a difficult decision. Should the product be marketed primarily by captive agents (company salesforce and company distribution division) or by independent intermediaries (outside sates agents and distributors)? This is an issue of downstream vertical integration. The authors explore the issue through an empirical investigation of distribution channel choice in foreign markets by U.S. semiconductor companies. Using original interview data, they develop scales to measure key variables. With these measures they build a logistic regression model of what factors affect the form of the distribution channel chosen in various foreign markets. The results indicate that integration is associated with the degree of transaction specificity of assets in the distribution function and whether or not the product being introduced is highly differentiated. There is evidence that the product will be sold through whatever channel is already in place, if any. Further, American firms seem more likely to integrate the distribution channel in highly developed industrialized countries (Western Europe) than in Japan and Southeast Asia, which are more culturally dissimilar. Implications for managers faced with a channel choice are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently it has been proposed that marketing science adopt a relativist orientation. The authors explore the nature of relativism as it is currently being discussed in the philosophy of science. Special attention is given to various types of cognitive relativism. Major implications for marketing science also are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chakravarti, Mitchell, and Staelin (CMS) draw a number of conclusions about judgment based models that agree with our field experience. However, we question whether their experiments form an adequate basis for ascribing negative effects to decision calculus models. A key part of the laboratory task is to estimate five model parameters, given between six and 18 observations of a share-advertising time series and no further market information. By contrast, in our field experience a major advantage of decision calculus models is that managers base their calibrations on multiple information sources and detailed knowledge of market and consumer behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the findings of two field studies and three recent laboratory experiments that assessed the efficacy of judgment based models in aiding marketing decision making. This analysis indicates factors that may affect the effectiveness of these models. The implications of the findings for users of judgment based marketing decision models as well as model builders are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research to improve the models' effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a marketing analysis perspective of the distribution of legal services. A study of the demographic. personal, end life cycle characteristics of users and nonusers of legal services reveals that users are still primarily those with money and prestige. Some difference is found in the ways the two groups perceive important characteristics of lawyers for decision making purposes and in their perceptions of what potential legal needs are the most important. The problem of unevenness in the distribution system is seen as a marketing one. Suggestions as to how the delivery of services can be improved to present nonusers are made, based on market analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodologies for analysis of industrial marketing decision systems are extended to allow systematic comparisons over decisions and over firms. Three such systems used by two firms to price and plan volumes for the French market are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature suggests that experts are little if at all better than novices in terms of the quality of decision outputs. To explain this counter-intuitive finding, the authors propose a conceptual framework that focuses on initial problem structure as a key moderator of the effect of expertise on performance. Specifically, they argue that the expert-novice performance differential should be greatest at moderate levels of problem structure and weakest at both extremes. To examine this central hypothesis, the authors conduct a controlled experiment that compares experts with novices when solving a complex problem that had characteristics of a moderately ill-structured problem. Relative to novices, the authors find that experts select fewer, but more diagnostic, information inputs and are more consistent when evaluating nonquantified inputs. As a result, they make more accurate and tightly clustered judgments than do novices, and also are more confident in their decisions. To examine the moderating influence of problem characteristics, certain task variables are manipulated to increase or decrease initial problem structure. As hypothesized, the benefits of expertise are less pronounced when solving a problem with increased initial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors present a general framework for purchase frequency modeling that enables flexible fitting and convenient computation. Their easily described purchase frequency distributions subsume many previous models and provide a connection between mixed Poisson marketing models and the conceptually distinct compound Poisson models. These distributions provide simple parametric equations for individual-level prediction of second-period purchase frequency based on observed first-period purchase frequencies. The results are applied to four marketing panel data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors present a tailored interviewing procedure for life-style segmentation. The procedure assumes that a life-style measurement instrument has been designed. A classification of a sample of consumers into life-style segments is obtained using a latent-class model. With these segments, the tailored interview procedure classifies consumers into the same segments in future studies. The procedure minimizes the error of misclassification and decreases the interview costs by using only a fraction of the items for each respondent. In an empirical application to a questionnaire designed to assess lifestyle related to the consumption of fashion, the authors obtain a classification that agrees with the full interview (i.e., using all scale items) for 73% of the respondents while using only 22% of all the questions in a traditional life-style battery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors present a new multidimensional unfolding methodology that can analyze various types of individual choice data. The model represents choice data, defined by dichotomous variables that indicate whether a particular brand was chosen or not, in terms of a joint space of consumers and brands. Explicit treatment of marketing and subject background variables is allowed through optional model reparameterizations of consumers and brands. Together with the joint space representation of both consumers and brands, these optional reparameterizations can provide information on appropriate market segmentation bases and respective product positioning strategies. The authors apply this spatial choice model to data on consumer (intended) choices for 12 residential communications devices and demonstrate how the results can be used for optimal positioning decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political economy framework illuminates interplay between the internal and external sociopolitical and economic forces of marketing channels. Framing the collection and analysis of data from retailer informants on channel environments, configuration, and decision structure, a theoretical model is developed for explaining interorganizational responses to uncertainty and dependence constraints of the channel environment. Heterogeneity is hypothesized to precipitate complex and fluid channel structures as a means of coping with uncertainty. In contrast, high levels of variability in the output environment are expected to foster vertical integration and bureaucratization as a means of reducing dependence. Support for both hypotheses is reported and implications for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the conditions that encourage channel members to relinquish control willingly and purposefully to others. They use an attribution theory perspective to predict when channel members, particularly franchisees, will relinquish control in spite of having legal latitude to retain it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses an information-theoretic approach to testing the exact order of an individual's brand choice process and compares it with alternative tests that perform a similar task. Special focus is on the relative statistical power of the various tests when limited choice sequences are available. Considering computational complexity and statistical power, the author suggests instances in which the information-theoretic test is preferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing of the Special Issue on Competion in Marketing is particularly appropriate because of the growing importance of competition in marketing activities. With a slowdown in world economic growth, firms must take business away from competitors if they are to sustain their own growth rate. Deregulation, globalization of markets, flexible manufacturing, and rapidly changing technology are producing new sources of competition and altering the nature of competition in markets. Competition is the process by which independent sellers vie with each other for customers in a market. Because substitutes exist for most products and services, firms typically encounter competitors when marketing their offerings. Consequently, the effectiveness of marketing programs usually depends on the reaction of both customers and competitors. However, marketing theories and research have emphasized issues related to customer response and have directed less attention to competitive response. This lack of attention to competitive effects is surprising because it is difficult to imagine a marketing decision that is not affected by competitive activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors postulate that the firm pursues a present value profit maximization goal in determining its advertising strategy. Advertising is included in the profit function nonlinearly as a factor cost and as a demand stimulant. On the basis of optimal control theory, an optimal advertising-sales ratio decision rule is formulated with respect to the brand's demand parameters. Reliably collected data on sales and advertising expenditures on a bimonthly basis were used to obtain empirical estimates of the brand parameters. A simultaneous estimation of the demand parameters of all the competing brands was performed to harness efficiently the information inherent in the system of brand demand equations. Comparing the firm's behavior on brand advertising with the derived decision rule ratio suggests the potential usefulness of such analytical models for improving the productivity of advertising expenditures and for determining the change in advertising policy which would be appropriate in the event of changes in a brand's demand sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The logic underlying the Box-Jenkins transfer function analysis is developed and compared with established econometric approaches. The technique is shown to provide a safeguard against spurious effects by eliminating all time dependency in the data before assigning any effects to proposed independent variables, and by the systematic elimination of a wide variety of candidate effect models. The procedural steps in the technique are demonstrated in an application to the advertising-sales relationship, with particular focus on the advertising lag structure. The two best Box-Jenkins models are compared with previously derived advertising effect models and are shown to have greater forecasting accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequently implicit in marketing decisions are investments, far removed from marketing data, that turn up in sections of the financial reports. They can have troublesome effects on decision making, not only in the marketing activity but also in other areas. Thus, while marketing management is kept unaware of some ramifications of its earlier decisions, other departments may be treating outgrowths of marketing policy without ever understanding the roots of the problems they encounter. In this article hidden investments in inventory resulting from marketing decisions are described, their causes are analyzed and their effects are traced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of the systems approach to marketing management promises to breathe new life into marketing research. In this article the authors present their views of the relationship between decision-information flows and the management process in marketing, and state the case for expanding traditional marketing research into marketing information systems." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the reluctance of marketing men to publicize failures, there has been a tendency for managers to avoid the analysis of the possible effects of wrong decisions in the marketing process. Yet these wrong decisions can easily cause failure of the entire enterprise. This article sets forth a positive way to deal with the negative aspects of marketing decision making. The author presents a framework for the analysis of market risk in such a way that the reader can appreciate the dual nature of marketing decisions, the risk element as well as the profit element. In this way the possible effects of both good and bad decisions can be seen clearly before the initial action us taken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a new approach to product pricing which provides a formal vehicle to harness the judgment, experience, and intuition of businessmen. It provides an operational approach for quantifying the hypotheses of market pricers. Thus, this approach does not require the average product pricer to be a combination statistician, economist and quantitative methods expert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing theorists and marketing men in business view each other with mild suspicion, neither fully recognizing that the activities of both groups are aimed at improving the decision-making process. The author of this article holds that marketing research is more useful than marketing theory in the selection of the most appropriate course of marketing action. He believes that the most fruitful opportunities for the marketing theorist are in the development of theory for improving the design of marketing research activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are attitudes predictive of consumer behavior? What potential role does attitude measurement play in the marketing research program of a company? Does the Thurstone technique offer management a reliable tool for research and decision-making? What is the public's attitude or response to a promotional device such as trading stamps? An extensive research project regarding trading stamps provides insight into the answers to these and other questions. Over 400 pretest and 1,400 test interviews in three states produced the information on which this article is based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To research or not to research. That is a question that often plagues the marketing manager. Should he spend money on marketing research to get more facts so that a given operating decision may be sounder? Or should he save the money and make the decision without the added information a research would supply, thereby accepting an increased risk of decision error? Professor Alexander suggests a systematic approach to the twin problems of deciding when marketing research is worth while and of making it a more useful tool in the kit of the marketing manager. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing-research people are becoming increasingly interested in the various mathematical simulation techniques and models being developed, both in universities and in business firms. Many of these techniques are being used to solve marketing research problems that previously have been unsolvable, or "solved" by the "seat-of-the-pants" method. Here are some specific examples of the use of business-strategy exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How many marketing-research people have moved to broader management responsibilities? If the answer is not enough, find out in this brief article what some researchers have done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effective application of marketing research in marketing decision making and the use of research vs. intuition in decision making. The argument that scientific methods are more successful than common sense is raised and the author presents some situations when the use of research is helpful in marketing decision making. The article discusses hypotheses, logical and mathematical tools, statistical inference, economical solutions, and new strategies based on research results. The author argues that intuition based decisions are effective for immediate concerns where the cost of research outweighs the benefits. Research, though, is encouraged when marketing decisions require logic, economics, or statistics.

The article discusses an area of operations research, sensitivity analysis, which deals with the impact that changing factors or conditions have on decision rules. The author explains and illustrates how decision makers should think in terms of a decision range rather than a single-valued decision parameter. The article addresses the decision range, models of behavior, business information, data collection and processing, and presents a series of marketing management decision problems. The author emphasizes that single-valued decision rules fail to take into account differences in the values of parameters. An optimal-sensitive decision rule is a more effective tool.

The author presents his views on marketing research and its relation to management. He believes that marketing research must be translated into predictions that will aid managers in making decisions. Also presented are the author's opinions surrounding marketing surveys and questionnaires. The author asserts the importance of developing research concepts before conducting research.