Marketing Management, 16th Edition

Identifying Controls

Because the business environment undergoes constant change, companies must be agile in order to consistently realign their actions with current market realities. Controls steer a company in the direction of its ultimate goal by ensuring that company actions are in line with its strategy and tactics. Furthermore, controls make marketing operations more effective and cost efficient, and they make it possible to better assess the return on marketing investment by helping companies determine whether they are on the right track to achieve their goals.

Controls have one primary function: to inform the company whether it should stay with its current course of action, modify the underlying strategy and tactics, or completely abandon ...