It is extremely challenging to get marketing metrics pieces published at top marketing journals. Indeed, a piece on finding the right marketing metrics isn’t a typical article. One challenge is that often journals want something “new”. Investigating what managers do doesn’t seem new enough. This is a real shame.
I worry editorial decisions encourage the split between academics and practitioners. This seems quite dangerous for both. For instance, academics become increasingly irrelevant. They find it hard to justify the cost of their courses. Practitioners, on the other hand, have fewer barriers to being sold whatever nonsense is flavor of the month. If academics don’t think about managerial problems otehrs will. Sometimes this is great. A lot of the time it isn’t and we get overinflated claims.
Publishing On Marketing Metrics Is A Real Achievement
Firstly, Ofer Mintz and his co-authors have thus done impressive work to get published. In doing this they do a detailed look at what metrics are useful for marketing mix decisions. This is a good step in the right direction.
It is worth noting that there remain challenges. It is really hard to tie up what managers say to objective outcomes. As such, the authors use self-reported decision outcomes. I highlight the use of self-reported measures. To clarify, this should not be seen as a criticism. Simply put we need to come at problems from multiple angles. No single angle, therefore, is going to work perfectly.
What Do They Uncover About Finding The Right Marketing Metrics
The authors say “we find three customer-mindset marketing metrics – awareness, willingness to recommend, and satisfaction – are consistently effective for managers to employ across most marketing-mix decisions. These metrics, when employed, are consistently found to significantly improve marketing-mix decision outcomes.” (Mintz et al., 2020). This gives food for thought about what we are recommending to managers.
Above all how can we help managers improve their decisions? To help them in finding the right marketing metrics. A good way to start is to understand what they say they want. This won’t always be perfectly informative. Still it is a sensible place to start.
For more on effective use of metrics please see my popular marketing metrics pages, here.
Read: Ofer Mintz, Timothy J. Gilbride, Peter Lenk, and Imran S. Currim (2020) The Right Metrics for Marketing-Mix Decisions, International Journal of Research in Marketing, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167811620300616