For many firms, the competitive nature of today’s business environment has brought home the realization that strategic advantage will accrue to the firm doing the best marketing job.
Effective marketing requires information. Every firm must organize the flow of marketing information to its marketing managers. Companies are studying their manager’s information needs and designing marketing information systems (MIS) to meet these needs.
A marketing information system (MIS) is a system which is used to collect, analyze, report, and take action on information which is critically important to the marketing function of any organization.
To carry out their analysis, planning, implementations and control responsibilities marketing managers need information about development in the marketing environment.
It is useful only if it can help a marketing manager to make a decision. In order to be useful, information should be of high quality, relevant, timely and complete. It should provide a good picture of reality and it should thus to be accurate, valid and reliable.
The role of the MIS is to assess the manager’s information needs, develop the needed information, and distribute the information in a timely fashion to the marketing managers.
The Marketing Information System operates as a decision support system to the following four systems:
*The internal accounting system
*The marketing intelligence system
*The marketing research systems
*The analytical marketing system
The needed information is developed through internal company records, marketing intelligence activities, marketing research and marketing decision support analysis.
The information will includes data on economic and business trends, consumer buying behavior, market development, competitive products and prices as well as data generated by market research.
Marketing Information System
