Measuring market performance

Marketing

Centre for Marketing Working Paper

1996

Marketing performance needs to be assessable by senior management, and their financial advisors, as well as the marketers themselves This in turn requires a shared and consistent vocabulary, especially for marketing performance outcomes. The paper assumes that short- and long-term profits, in whatever form, are the fundamental objectives of marketing in commercial business. Differing definitions of "brand" and "brand equity", basic building blocks of marketing, are compared and contrasted. The change in brand equity needs to be considered alongside profit measures. Financial valuations of brand equity are useful but flawed for the purpose of assessing marketing performance. Non-financial measures can be assembled, however, as a guide to brand "health" - a word that accurately reflects brand equity as a "living" entity. As such it needs not only financial resources but care, attention and warmth. Brand equity is crucial to the assessment of marketing performance, and needs to be understood in non-financial language.

Centre for Marketing

96-904

Centre for Marketing Working Paper

No