Marketing in Turbulent Environments: Decision Processes and the Time-Value of Information

This paper studies the relationship between information-processing, marketing decisions and performance in turbulent markets — i.e., markets in which the time-value of information is a major factor in decision-making. Drawing on both organizational contingency theory and individual behavioral decision research, we suggest that successful performance depends on the congruence between the level of marketplace turbulence and the information-processing style and associated decisions adopted. We focus by way of example on the decision processes embodied informal planning procedures. Using the results from an experiment conducted with a strategic marketing simulation game, we show that “planning” leads to an underweighting of the time-value of marketplace information and thus a bias in favor of certain marketing decisions over others — decisions which, in this case, result in inferior performance when compared with that of decision- makers not engaged in formal planning. We discuss the implications of the findings for managerial behavior in high turbulent markets._x000B__x000B_