ISYS90045 – Assignment 1
Assignment 1
What leads to deploying marketing analytics and the results that come from it

Dejan Tasevski, ID: 632367

Contents 1. The paper ……………........................................................................................................3 2. The Research Question .................................................................................................3 3. The Method ..................................................................................................................3 4.1 The Method – How was the research designed .....................................................3 4.2 The Method – How was the research carried out ………………………………………………4 4. Findings – What were the results to the questions posed in the paper…………………….4 5. Lessons for practitioners...............................................................................................5 6. References.....................................................................................................................5

1. The Paper
The paper chosen for this assignment describes how the deployment of marketing analytics produces positive organizational outcomes and the way marketing analytics vary widely across different firms.
Based upon the upper echelons theory (Hambrick and Mason 1984) and the resource based view (Barney 1991; Wernerfelt 1984) of the firms a conceptual framework is developed explaining the factors that lead to deployment of marketing analytics and the relationship between this deployment and firm performance.

2. The Research Question The low prevalence of marketing analytics implies that managers are not convinced about their benefits, regardless of most research stating that marketing analytics would improve the revenues of the firm.
Based on these considerations, directly from the paper the objective research is to study three questions.

Q1. What leads to the deployment of marketing analytics within firms?

Q2. Does widespread deployment of marketing analytics within firms lead to better firm performance?

Q3. Is the improvement in performance associated with a sustainable competitive advantage?

3. The Method

3.1 The Method – how was the research designed?

To address these questions a conceptual framework was inserted which relied on both the resource based view and the upper echelon theory to identify the factors that encourage the deployment of marketing analytics.
The results of the research are based on a survey of 212 Fortune 1.000 senior executives, validated with secondary source performance data.
Since this research was one of the first to explore the performance implications of marketing analytics several scales of the construct were not available, thus leading the researchers to develop the scales that were missing, following a four phase iterative procedure: I. Independently generating a large pool of items for each of the constructs from an extensive literature review. II. 15 senior level, highly regarded marketing academics expanded the pre-generated list of items and evaluated the clarity of appropriateness of each item. III. Administered pretests to six top managers to assess any ambiguity or difficulty they experienced in responding to the items. IV. 31 senior managers completed the questionnaire with the measure items.

3.2 The Method – how was the research carried out?

A mail survey was conducted amongst the executives of Fortune 1000 firms. First, 500 entries were randomly selected of the Fortune 1000 list, which were then leveraged with connections from two major U.S. universities to obtain the names of 968 senior executives working in these firms.
The executives were then addressed via personal letters in which they were asked to complete the survey in reference to either their strategic business unit, or their company. A nominal incentive was also provided (US $1