Article Summary: “The Bottom Line: Marketing & Firm Performance” Essay

Leslie M. Fine, author of The Bottom Line Marketing & Firm Performance, analyzes how marketing relates to how well the pie-eyed does overall. A majority of the article is counsellinged on how customer relations impact devoted performance and potful affect shareholder wealth. Firms improving customer equity and reducing the firms cash needs, get out influence the net present value of the firm. Within recent years, there has been an increase in the cognizance that firms should be able to demonstrate that marketing actions affect financial outcomes. Along with this awareness, marketers have realized that the investor is similarly the customer, especially at the initial IPO, and leading companies to report customer equity statements and customer equity settle statements.The article notes various studies that have been conducted analyzing the impact of customer satisfaction in relation to areas such as the stock value gap, performance of portfolios and the impact of marketing, res earch and development and operations on firm performance. The studies reason out that doing whats right for the customer is doing whats right for the firm and shareholder value. Customer satisfaction has a significant impact on the stock value gap when compare to the top competitor, meaning the lesser the gap the higher the customer satisfaction ratings of the firm. In relation to portfolio performance, the study indicated that portfolios with firms that had high satisfaction oodles produced positive trend portfolios. Over a 10-year period those positive trend portfolios yield better than others and to a greater extent impressively better than the S&P 500.Through reading this article I began to see understandably the importance and relevance of marketing to the success of the firm. As shown by the research indicated in this article, firms should receive to show up an additional emphasis of the marketing function throughout the firm. I was particularly interested in the view of h aving a Chief Marketing Officer in the boardroom. The idea of having a voice for the customer in the boardroom is positive in all aspects. Firms with a CMO offer additional input if the goal of the firm is to pursue innovation, differentiation and complex grassing initiatives. As seen in the articles for this week, innovation and differentiate can surmount a firm greatly. Having a CMO will only offer an additional benefit to the firm.Fine overly included a section on the Bond strategies effecting the firm, which analyzed that the perceived brand relevance and brand energy provide incremental information to explain stock returns other than the information explained by account measures. This section focuses on how mergers and acquisitions use this analysis to determine the value of the target firm. This was interesting to me due to the focus of mergers and acquisitions being on the customer base of the target firm. Typically, my first thought in relation to mergers and acquisitions would be to consider the balance sheet and stock value of the firm as to how the particular target firm could be beneficial. After reading this article I would like to know how much these studies have sparked firms to begin doing in-house research, as well as how many have began focusing on the customer as a driving factor to the shareholder value of the company and performance of the firm.