MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEM AND INTELLIGENCE

In 1966 Professor Philip Kotler  used the terms marketing nerve center to describe a new unit within marketing to gather and process marketing information and identified three types of marketing information.

1. Marketing intelligence – information that flows into the firm from the environment.
2. Internal marketing information – information that is gathered within the firm.
3. Marketing communication – information that flows from the firm outward to the environment.

Kotler  recognized the decision support intent of the nerve center: “complex marketing decisions such as reducing a price, redesigning sales territories, or enhancing the advertising expenditure level can be pre-evaluated and post-evaluated through the scientific analysis of available data.”

We can define a marketing information system (MKIS) as a computer-based system that works in conjunction with other revising information systems to support the firm’s management in solving problems that relate to marketing of the firm’s products.   
There are two key elements in the definition.  

• all of the functional information systems are properly integrated, and , 
• the problem-solving support is not limited to marketing managers.

Kotler has defined marketing information system (MIS) as a system consisting of people, equipment and procedures to collect, edit, analyze, evaluate and distribute market  The marketing information system encompasses the analysis, planning, implementation and control function of marketing management.  

The overall objective of MIS is to provide input from target markets, channels of marketing, competitors, consumers and other elements for generating, changing and improving the marketing decisions and formulating marketing strategies.

The internal record system provide the MIS inputs consisting of information on market potential, sales, prices, inventory levels, receivables, payables and so on), marketing intelligence system (every day information about pertinent developments in the marketing environment), marketing research system (design, collection, analysis and reporting of data and findings relevant to a specific marketing situation facing the company) and analysis of information (a coordinated collection of data, systems, tools and techniques with supporting software and hardware by which an organization gathers and interprets) and turns it into a basis for marketing action and tactics. 

The term marketing information system has gained prominence in the new era of technological advancement, consumer consciousness and computerized information systems.  It consists of a structured, interacting complex of people, machines and procedures aimed to generate an orderly flow of relevant information, gathered from both intra and extra firm sources for use as the basis for decision-making in specified responsibility areas of marketing management”.Marketing information system consists of a set of procedures and methods for the continuous analysis and presentation of information for marketing decisions.