Marketing accountability as a moderator of marketing's influence with senior finance professionals

The focus of this research is on the marketing capabilities and marketing metrics that contribute to marketing accountability and how these moderate marketing influence with senior finance professionals. This is an important topic as the marketing function is reported to be losing influence within organisations and as a consequence losing resources as it struggles to demonstrate how marketing activities link to organisational outcomes. Using in-depth interviews and an online survey with a unique sample frame of senior finance professionals, this research produced four research papers that advance the marketing accountability and marketing influence research streams. Where previous research has identified marketing metrics and capabilities at a conceptual level, this study identifies the specific metrics and capabilities the marketing function should employ to better link their marketing activities to organisational outcomes, resulting in marketing accountability. The results of this study find the marketing function to be influential across both marketing and non-marketing decisions. However, the levels of marketing influence in Australia are lower than Europe and North America. A positive relationship between marketing influence and business performance is supported, with marketing accountability confirmed as an antecedent of marketing influence. To enhance marketing accountability, the results of this study suggest the marketing function should develop marketing capabilities in the areas of data analysis, financial planning and financial analysis and employ both financial and non-financial metrics. The use of these capabilities and metrics would allow the marketing department to demonstrate accountability through linking their activities to organisational outcomes.