With the recent explosion of information technologies, companies can now generate and find marketing information in great quantities. The marketing world is filled to the brim with information from innumerable sources. Consumers themselves are now generating tons of marketing information. Through their smartphones, PCs, and tablets—via online browsing and blogging, apps and social media interactions, texting and video, and geolocation data—consumers now volunteer a tidal wave of bottom-up information to companies and to each other.

Far from lacking information, most marketing managers are overloaded with data and often overwhelmed by it. This problem is summed up in the concept of big data. The term big data refers to the huge and complex data sets generated by today’s sophisticated information generation, collection, storage, and analysis technologies. Every year, the people and systems of the world generate about a trillion gigabytes of information. That’s enough data to fill 2.47 trillion good old CD-ROMs, a stack tall enough to go to the moon and back four times. A full 90 percent of all the data in the world has been created in just the past two years.3

Big data presents marketers with both big opportunities and big challenges. Companies that effectively tap this glut of data can gain rich, timely customer insights. However, accessing and sifting through so much data is a daunting task. For example, when a large consumer brand such as Coca-Cola or Apple monitors online discussions about its brand in tweets, blogs, social media posts, and other sources, it might take in a stunning 6 million public conversations a day, more than 2 billion a year. That’s far more information than any manager can digest. Thus, marketers don’t need more information; they need better information. And they need to make better use of the information they already have.

The real value of marketing information lies in how it is used—in the customer insights that it provides. Based on such thinking, companies ranging from PepsiCo, Starbucks, and McDonald’s to Google and GEICO have restructured their marketing information and research functions. They have created customer insights teams, whose job it is to develop actionable insights from marketing information and work strategically with marketing decision makers to apply those insights. Consider PepsiCo:4

Years ago, PepsiCo’s various marketing research departments were mainly data providers. But not anymore. Today they are integrated “customer insights teams” charged with delivering insights at the center of the brand, the business, and consumers. The teams gather insights from a rich and constantly evolving variety of sources—ranging from grocery store cash registers, focus groups and surveys, and subconscious measures to mingling with and observing customers in person and monitoring their digital and social media behaviors. The teams continually evaluate new methods for uncovering consumer truths that might predict market behavior. Then the insights teams use the data and observations, tempered by intuitive judgment, to form actionable consumer insights with real business implications. Finally, they share these insights with brand teams from Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Aquafina, and other PepsiCo brands to help them make better decisions.

Beyond just transmitting data and findings through traditional fact-based presentations, reports, and spreadsheets, the Consumer Insights teams share their insights in more engaging, accessible, and digestible ways. For example, the PepsiCo North America Beverages (NAB) Consumer Insights team has even developed a consumer insights app that disseminates custom-designed data and content to marketing and brand decision makers. More than just collecting and distributing data, the PepsiCo consumer insights teams are strategic marketing partners. “We drive decisions that ultimately lead to sustainable growth,” says a senior PepsiCo consumer strategy and insights executive. “And everything we do impacts the bottom line.”

Thus, companies must design effective marketing information systems that give managers the right information, in the right form, at the right time and help them to use this information to create customer value, engagement, and stronger customer relationships. A marketing information system (MIS) consists of people and procedures dedicated to ­assessing information needs, developing the needed information, and helping decision ­makers use the information to generate and validate actionable customer and market insights.

Figure 4.1 shows that the MIS begins and ends with information users—­marketing managers, internal and external partners, and others who need marketing information and insights. First, it interacts with these information users to assess information needs. Next, it interacts with the marketing environment to develop needed information through internal company databases, marketing intelligence activities, and marketing research. Finally, the MIS helps users to analyze and use the information to develop customer insights, make marketing decisions, and manage customer engagement and relationships.

Figure 4.1

The Marketing Information System