12Pd
Column 18 · Marketing-Finance and Performance · Era 1, Foundations (to 1969)
Marketing Productivity
Outputs: performance · Emerging or specialized · Cluster VII, Outcomes
Description
Sevin applied cost and profitability analysis to marketing segments such as products, customers, and territories to measure the productivity of marketing expenditures, an early treatment of marketing accountability.
Managerial Implications
Marketing spending must be judged by returns, by segment, product, and channel, not by totals. Build a profitability view that assigns marketing costs to the customers and activities that caused them. The result usually shows that a few segments fund the rest; the managerial job is to redirect effort toward the profitable ones and to fix or exit the unprofitable ones deliberately.