Marketing Audit - An Examination of Company's Marketing Position

Marketing and Finance functions are mutually dependent. One without the other is incomplete and the success of the firm depends on the harmonious relationships between these two functions. Hence, financial management concepts have been accepted for supporting marketing decisions. Marketing audit includes a careful appraisal of company’s past performances as well as an evaluation of its marketing strengths. In this paper an attempt has been made to discuss the concept, need, coverage and salient features of the Marketing Audit. The paper also outlines different factors of Marketing Audit and finally presents major auditing questions in Marketing Strategy and Marketing Organization Audit. Backdrop Marketing is one of the terms in business that is often misunderstood. In the immediate past the term was used to denote selling or advertising. Recently, however, people have started saying it is Market Research - i.e., a process most manufacturers and sellers do for finding out what consumers want. It is true that, in one sense, marketing is about all of these and yet it is much more. For instance, marketing is not selling, but the culmination of successful marketing is a sale. Similarly, advertising is an effective means of communicating with potential customers, and convince them of the merits of products. It is also a fact that without a proper understanding of real customer needs, success cannot be reaped in market place. This aspect can be well attended to by adopting effective market research. Marketing is the process of determining consumer demand for a product or service, motivating its sales and distributing it into ultimate consumption at a profit. The various functions performed by the marketing management include market research, product planning, pricing policy, sales promotion and advertising and distribution of goods or services. The purpose of a business plan is to answer three central questions : Where are you now? Where do you want to go? How to organize the resources to get there? The term auditing is conceived here as a structured approach to the collection and analysis of information and data in the complex business environment as an essential prerequisite to problem-solving. It is likely that a company may find that performance problems recur regularly. Such problems may occur in the entire marketing function of an organization or it could happen in one department, for example, product management. Determining what causes performance problems to recur may require conducting a marketing audit.