Proposition to Evaluate the Results of the Marketing Communications Program Under Organisations’ Value-Creation Perspective

Abstract

It is currently being observed that there is a steep increase in the level of demand for administrators to maximize their return of capital invested by shareholders. Furthermore, marketing managers must attempt to increase the value of various companies, and, for that, the evaluation of the investments in the field is paramount. With the objective of contributing to the studies establishing the relationship between marketing and value-based management, this study demonstrated the possibility of evaluating the results originating from the marketing communication activities, based upon a proposition of indicators that could relate communication investments and the company’s sales with the analysis of value within organizations. Beginning with the initial proposal of utilising indicators, and considering the body of literature on marketing metrics, this exploratory field research involved in-depth interviews with specialists in the fields of marketing, finance and corporative and strategic planning. Besides the interviews, the field research also involved the elaboration of a case study to illustrate the usage of the proposed indicators, accordingly revised derived from the interviews. As a result, it was demonstrated that the possibility of applying indicators to the evaluation of a marketing communications plan through the analysis of the creation of value descending from the actions taken by the plan, especially those relating to a company’s operational profit. The example of the usage of indicators allowed us to observe that, although the marketing communications actions levered a company’s operational profit, in 0.034% of cases studied, these actions did not contribute to the increase in value of the company’s business. Therefore, together with these indicators, parameters were also proposed to evaluate the addition of value based on the level of investment in marketing communications throughout a pre-determined analysed period.