Discuss the meaning of Marketing Information System (MIS).
Marketing Information System can be described as an internal arrangement which helps the management in decision making. It is concerned with providing information to the management about the current state of affairs in the market and the responses of the customer and competitors to company’s action.
It is a structure consisting of people and well-designed procedure to gather information from the internal and external sources, classify, analyse and interpret it, so that it can be used for managerial decision making in the area of marketing. Through marketing information system, firm tries to keep itself abreast with the changes around it and accordingly adapt itself to the changes.
Marketing information system has been defined by Prof. Alder Lee as:
“An interacting, continuing, future oriented structure of people, equipment and procedure designed to generate and process an information flow which can aid business executives in the management of their marketing programmes.”
Marketing Information System, is thus, an organised future oriented structure consisting of people, equipment and procedure, which is used for generating and processing information helpful in making critical decisions in the area of marketing.
Based on the above definition following are the features of Marketing Information System:
- It is a future oriented structure, aiming towards future policies and strategies of the firm.
- It is on-going structure which keeps on working, as the market keeps on changing and these changes will always be there, which have to be incorporated.
- It consists of people, machines and procedure. For carrying out various activities, people are required, who collect the data from various sources, analyse and interpret it, utilise the services of machines for various purposes and through set procedures use it for effective decision making.
- MIS is used for the purpose of generating and processing of the information.
- The above information is used by executives in taking decisions for various activities.
- The decisions relate to the area of marketing.
