Definition: Marketing information management is a group of activities that include monitoring, analysis and organization of market data. It is generally one of the functions of the marketing department that comprises the collection and study of market data that is relevant for designing the company’s strategies and plans.
What Does Marketing Information Management Mean?
Marketing managers need to continually improve their understanding of market variables and trends. When defining marketing plans the company must have a good knowledge of how the pertinent marketplace works and who are the main participants. Marketing managers need to consistently track certain key variables to properly react to market events and to be one-step ahead of the competition.
This includes information such as consumer preferences, consumption patterns, market size and growth, number of competitors, variety of brands, new products launched and main market tendencies. Every firm needs to identify what is the core data for its specific case and which is the most suitable method to collect, monitor and analyze it. Sources might be internal, such as information provided by vendors, and external like market reports delivered by consulting firms.
Output of marketing information management must be valuable market information that supports decision makers in the process of designing and evaluating strategies.
Example
Tropical Houses is a company that produces and markets an innovative wood-based system to construct a specific house models in short time. The firm’s executives want to launch new models and additional functionalities on a regular basis but they don’t count with adequate market information to design plans properly.
They realized the need of a marketing information management system so they created a new department to be in charge of market data collection and analysis. This new function allowed the company to systematically analyze useful information to elaborate plans. Based on permanent market analysis, the firm was able to review strategies and plans periodically and to introduce successfully new products to the market.
