The use of marketing and financial metrics in Japanese firms

Abstract

In this study, we examined marketing accountability by assessing the significance of the use of marketing and financial metrics in Japanese firms. Data related to both metrics was provided by 667 managers. The individual decision of marketing-mix activity served as our unit of analysis. We asked managers how many of the 15 marketing and 15 financial metrics proposed by Mintz and Currim (2013) they used. We concluded that the use of metrics contributes to improving performance; however, the relationship is not simple. Although managers using few metrics are likely to fail, the success of those that use many is not guaranteed either. We developed and examined an advanced model after reexamining Mintz and Currim’s study and determined that the control of reporting duty between vertical management layers was effective for using financial metrics. Top management control seems to increase effectiveness when using marketing metrics, but this effect diminishes when considering several control variables. Our additional cluster analysis identifies that the majority of our samples depend on fewer metrics with worse performance. The existence of this majority named “no metrics” implies that the relationship between metric use and performance can be linear or non-linear depending on the size of this cluster.