Barriers of marketing effectiveness and efficiency within companies: a qualitative study

Market orientation can be defined as the company’s ability to systematically generate relevant information about current and latent customer needs, spread this information across all company departments and use this information in decision making and subsequent behavior. Current research proves that market orientation correlates strongly with profitability. Strengthening market orientation should therefore be the main focus of the marketing department. However, over the last years, marketers within companies have faced serious criticism coming from the top management as well as from other business functions. This criticism stems from the generally shared opinion that marketing expenditures tend to rise whereas marketing effectiveness and efficiency seem to decline over time, as proved by relatively low satisfaction and loyalty levels of customers and their resistance towards marketing activities. This study investigates the main barriers of marketing effectiveness and efficiency within companies. Based on two focus groups with senior Czech marketing managers we revealed several key themes that reflect how local marketers perceive their jobs. We identified that marketing departments differ diametrically in activities they execute, that marketers face image problem within their companies and that they are not able to prove return of their activities sufficiently. Furthermore, we individuated barriers specific for our context not found in the literature. However, companies of different size and sectors have specifics which are discussed in the text. Managerial recommendations are added. All of these findings should be of high importance for both CEOs (resp. owners) and marketers, because increasing effectiveness and efficiency of the marketing function is their common goal