Measures of marketing success

A mismatch of the meaning of “success”, as perceived by researcher and the firms researched, renders research less relevant and possibly, where the firm's resources are not directed at the goals selected by the researcher, misleading. This paper is concerned with the dependent variables used for business or marketing “success”, not its drivers, in seven leading marketing and strategy journals. The findings are that researcher, not respondent, views of performance dominate the literature which raises issues of relevance. Researchers are not necessarily being normative, and should be thoughtful in their selection of marketing performance objectives, i.e. the outcomes they seek to explain. A checklist of dependent variable considerations is provided together with a tentative definition of “success” against which performance may be compared.

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