Marketing, Cost Management and Management Accounting

Marketing costs respresent a significantly large component of the cost structure in many industries. Relative to research on manufacturing costs, however, marketing costs have received very little attention in the accounting literature. In the marketing literature, analyses of marketing function have primarily focused on the effects of marketing functions on sales volume and revenues. In this paper, we highlight a need for understanding the nature of marketing costs and for developing measures that can evaluate both the efficiency and cost effectiveness of marketing functions. We provide a discussion that links marketing with cost management/management accounting using: (a) a review of the intersection between the marketing and accounting literatures, (b) field-interviews with marketing executives, and (iii) results from a questionnaire survey of marketing executives. Significant gaps are perceived to exist between the usefulness of information available from existing accounting systems and the potential value of accounting information in marketing decisions. Eight areas of future research on the interface between marketing and accounting are discussed.