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This paper examines the relationship between marketing automation emergence and the marketers' use of heuristics in their decision-making processes. Heuristics play a role for the integration of human decision-making models and automation in augmentation processes, particularly in marketing where automation is widespread.

This study analyzes qualitative data about the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics in decision-making models, and it is based on evidence collected from interviews with twenty-two experienced marketers.

Marketers make extensive use of heuristics to manage their tasks. While the adoption of new automatic marketing tools modify the task environment and field of use of traditional decision-making models, the adoption of heuristics rules with a different scope is essential to defining inputs, interpreting/evaluating outputs and control the marketing automation system.

The paper makes a contribution to research on the relationship between marketing automation and decision-making models. In particular, it proposes the results of in-depth interviews with senior decision makers to assess the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics as decision-making models adopted by marketers.

This special issue seeks to create an interdisciplinary community of researchers applying decision-making theory to the international marketing context. The articles published in this special issue contain cutting-edge conceptual and empirical studies that enhance existing knowledge on international marketing decision-making.

Thirty-six (36) manuscripts were submitted to the editorial office focusing on a broad range of international marketing decision-making. Following a thorough review process, a collection of five original empirical studies on different facets of international marketing decision-making from multiple theoretical, contextual and methodological perspectives are included in this Special Issue.

Overall, the combined evidence presented in this Special Issue shows that the general field of international marketing decision-making is starting to mature. Evidence from the contributors to this Special Issue shows that researchers have taken inspiration from both the past and the present when designing and crafting their research and, by doing so, they have collectively contributed to new knowledge in terms of international marketing decision-making principles, decision-maker personality traits, the consequences of international marketing decisions and cross-cultural differences with regards to decision-making influences and behavior.

With few exceptions, not much is known about how international marketing decisions are made. Yet, the way international marketing decisions are made is critical for international marketing success. This sphere of international marketing decision-making research, while relatively anemic, is typically underpinned by behavioral economic theories of decision-making, such that a duality in decision-making processes is identified. Nevertheless, international marketing and management studies are dominated by the planning paradigm, while in practice, managers often see the attempt to deviate from planning as irresponsible and dangerous. The articles included in this special issue have addressed major unanswered questions regarding the content and processes of international marketing decision-making.

Research concerning marketing standardisation is still developing. A new research theme has recently emerged, wherein it is suggested that the structure of marketing decision making is likely to be a factor of marketing standardisation strategy. This study aims to add insights to this new research field. Based on the outcome of previous studies, it aims to propose and test a research framework concerning the relationships among environmental factors, the structure of decision making and marketing standardisation/performance. This study seeks to focus on the two most important programme elements: promotion and product.

The study used the experience of 78 firms operating in the European Union (EU) region to achieve its research objectives. The data used were collected through a postal survey. This analysis used both partial least square (PLS) and hierarchical regression analysis methods to examine its research framework.

The study has generated a framework for future research. It is suggested that, with the absence of direct influence, the structure of decision making is still likely to have an indirect effect on marketing standardisation strategy. Although a path relationship is unlikely to exist between environmental factors, the structure of decision making and performance, the joint effect between environmental factors and the decision‐making structure on performance is confirmed. The outcomes of the study suggest that, through careful selection, firms adopting a high and low degree centralisation structure can benefit from operating in a similar high/low environment, as well as in a country with high/low market size and potential.

The study's findings have enhanced those uncovered by other researchers. A number of implications can be drawn for these findings.

This study aims to provide more insight into how customer voice is captured and used in managerial decision-making at the marketing-finance interface. This study’s focus is on understanding how the customer voice, often communicated through online and social media platforms, is used in high-performing hotels.

This research is based on a case study of four high-performing Irish hotels. For each case, multiple informants, including marketing managers, general managers and finance managers, were interviewed and shadowed. Twenty seven decisions across the four cases were analysed to assess the use of customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Social media provides a stage that has empowered the customer voice because of the public nature of the interaction and the network effect. Customer voice is incorporated in managerial decision-making in three distinct ways – symbolically as part of an early warning system, for action-oriented operational decisions and to some extent in the knowledge-enhancing role for tactical decisions. While there is a greater appreciation among senior managers and the finance and accounting managers of the importance of customer voice, this study finds clear limits in its utilisation and more reliance on traditional finance and accounting data, especially in strategic decision-making.

The cases belong to a highly visible open environment of hotels in an industry where customer voice has immediate and strong effects. The findings may not directly apply to industries characterised by a relatively more closed context such as banking or insurance. Moreover, the findings reflect the practices of high-performing hotels and do not necessarily capture the practices used in less successfully operating hotels.

While marketers need to enhance their ability to create a narrative that links the customer voice to revenue generation, finance managers also need to develop a skillset and adopt a mindset that appropriately reflects the influential role for customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Despite the linkage of marketing performance to business performance, there is limited research on the impact of customer information on managerial decision-making. This research provides insight into how customer voice is considered at the critical marketing-finance interface.

Although a great deal of research has focused on global marketing strategy development and implementation, little research has focused on the global marketing managers charged with the responsibilities of developing and implementing such strategy. The aim of this paper is to develop a model that identifies a set of soft skills that have the ability to increase the effectiveness of global marketing managers in making the tactical adaptations necessary to develop and implement global marketing strategy in an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace.

A conceptual model is developed with coinciding propositions.

The model developed theorizes that the ability of global marketing managers to make tactical adaptations to the firm's global marketing strategy (and thus enhance performance) is driven by the soft skills of tacit knowledge, experience, learning, unlearning, intuition, self‐confidence, flexibility, prioritization of problems, working under pressure and ambiguity tolerance.

The model highlights the specific soft skills that firms can work to foster in their global marketing managers and educators can work to incorporate within a curriculum. Through the development of these soft skills within a firm's global marketing managers, the firm can achieve a competitive position within the marketplace.

This study is one of the first to conceptualize a specific set of soft skills that enhance a global marketing manager's ability to make tactical adaptations to the firm's global marketing strategy by which the firm can be more competitive. As such, this study provides for a better understanding of how soft skills relate to the development and implementation of global marketing strategy and how firms can be more competitive by not only employing unique human capital, but by developing global marketing managers who are more effective at adapting to constantly changing global market conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to diagnose two types of causal relationships from the perspective of the structural equations model. First, the relationship is analysed between managers’ beliefs regarding the use of marketing information in making decisions and the rational premises of decision validity. Next, the rational premises of decision validity are considered in reference to managers’ abilities to select appropriate information from marketing research reports. Taking into account all of the above premises, the author in the empirical research conducted here introduced the following two research hypotheses which state that: H1: the high level of managers’ beliefs about the usefulness of information from marketing research does not yet positively influence their way of reasoning and making decisions in the light of the bounded-rationality theory. H2: managers who do not use the bounded-rationality criteria of decision assessment, lack of the analytical approach in solving decision problems, also reflect the inability of selecting proper information from a marketing research report.

In the conducted empirical research, that is, in the process of gathering the information, the internet questionnaire survey was used, which included the author’s own version of items measuring respective latent variables. Next, to the chosen group of the respondents (invited to the survey through the two social networking sites: LinkedIn and Golden Line), a direct link to the questionnaire was sent via personal e-mails. The method of providing answers to the questions in the online survey included indicating by the respondents the answers on a seven-point Likert scale for the statements which were expressed in agree/disagree format. The whole empirical research was conducted between March 1 and August 31 in 2014, and the process of choosing the appropriate respondents to the sample was conducted with the use of the two techniques: judgemental sampling and snowball sampling. The final size of sample equalled n=213 and its structure included the individuals in companies, who have borne the responsibility mainly for the organisation and planning of strategic and tactic marketing activities. In short, the sample structure consisted of the respondents responsible for decision-making processes and included: marketing directors (45 per cent), product managers (27 per cent), managing directors and chief executive officers (20 per cent), as well as marketing executives (8 per cent).

On the basis of findings and the obtained empirical results it is argued that decision makers in companies, despite their strong declarations regarding the use of marketing information, in reality prefer to act in a non-analytical way when making choices. Managers, when faced with difficulties in information processing, adopt simple solutions in solving decision problems which are much closer to the irrational sphere of making choices. Thus the full potential of information that is available to them from marketing research is not even considered. This irrational behaviour in decisions as well as the lack of analytical thinking result in further consequences pertaining to the way that information is selected.

In spite of all theoretical arguments supporting the bounded-rational theory of making choices, the irrationality or, simply, the non-analytical thinking in decision-making processes in organisations takes place. The inability to use effectively information by managers in companies and failure to scrutinise their own processes of decision making on the basis of logic and reasoning is admittedly the Achille’s heel of many information users. Using information from marketing research in decisions, as well as undertaking the sequence of steps to ensure the valid decision-making process, seems to be a huge problem for managers. Taking into account, the empirical research findings, one can argue now that in spite of the managers’ conviction about the usefulness of the information from marketing research, that is, despite their declarations pertaining to use of information in decision-making processes, such information is in practice often ignored and not taken into account.

In the paper the author explains why, as is supported by empirical evidence, managers in companies decide to conceal their real beliefs concerning the usefulness of marketing information. Taking this into consideration, the indirect question of the empirical research conducted here is whether managers ever seriously consider marketing research results when making decisions?

Research on market information use in product innovation suggests that firms utilize two key strategic decision-making processes: incremental and comprehensive. Drawing from organizational information processing theory, literature implies that these processes operate differently. However, this assumption remains untested. Moreover, the degree to which a comprehensive process affects the innovation strategy outcomes depends on market information time sensitivity (MITS) and analyzability. To-date, no study has tested these assertions, either. Finally, it is suggested that meaningful market strategy is a key driver of new product success and it is important to understand how decision-making processes influence it under differing time sensitivity and analyzability.

Based on survey data from 250 Chinese firms, authors use structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses.

The results generally support authors’ contentions. More specifically, marketing strategy outcomes are influenced by marketing strategy incrementality (MSI) and marketing strategy comprehensiveness (MSC) differently. Further, time sensitivity moderates the effect of both MSI and MSC on outcomes, except for the effect of MSI on decision quality. Finally, analyzability moderates the relationships between decision making processes and certain strategy outcomes such as between MSI and meaningfulness.

Drawing from information processing theory, authors argue that incremental and comprehensive marketing strategy decision making for new product operate differentially under the same conditions. Further, the effects of these decision processes on outcomes depend on time sensitivity and analyzability of market information. Finally, auhtors argue that meaningful market strategy is a driver of success. The authors find support for most of our hypotheses and provide directions for future research.

In the era of Big Data, larger volumes of data arrive in various forms at an increasing pace but of questionable quality and value. The abundant information (that emanates from these 5Vs – volume, variety, velocity, veracity, and value) taxes the bounded capacity of managers. This chapter introduces a taxonomy of approaches available for strategic decision making in an information-rich environment, several of which showcase that automation can help to augment (not supplant) managerial decision making. This taxonomy is then applied to an innovation context. Mapping a stylized version of the phases of the innovation process (i.e., front-end innovation, new product development, commercialization) onto the four decision-making approaches yields an organizing framework for understanding strategic decision making in the realm of innovation. The chapter concludes by identifying promising areas for future research.

This conceptual chapter: (1) explicates the foundational terminology regarding strategic decision making in a marketing context; (2) provides a primer on the era of Big Data and making strategic decisions in an information-rich environment; (3) introduces a taxonomy, which features approaches to decision making in an information-rich environment; and (4) applies the taxonomy in an innovation context to yield an organizing framework.

This chapter focuses on the nascent field that is emerging at the intersection of innovation, marketing strategy, and information-rich environments, and breaks new ground by exploring automation available to aid managerial decision making in this realm.

The main practical implication is to elucidate that managers can apply different approaches to decision making in today’s information-rich environment. Tables 2–4 provide to managers 12 examples of the types of decision making in an innovation context.

This chapter introduces a new taxonomy to classify four approaches for making strategic decisions in an information-rich environment, and extends that framework to the innovation realm. This framework aims to prompt researchers to explore important topics that exist at the intersection of innovation, marketing strategy, and managerial decision making in an information-rich environment.

This paper advocates the merits of a holistic qualitative research method and analysis as being the most penetrative method for determining the decision making process of SME owner‐managers. This holistic method is refined in use and illustrated in an example of assessing the processes and outcomes of SME decision making in respect of the “product” aspects of marketing activity. The methodology allows the range of important issues that may be expected to be inherent in how entrepreneur owner‐managers DO marketing to be identified; and to determine the quality of this decision making. This methodology could be used for other applications in a variety of marketing circumstances, and, indeed, a key feature of the methodology outlined in this paper is its flexibility and adaptability.

Argues that a deeper understanding of the current strategic marketing decision‐making processes in small businesses is necessary to raise the acceptance rates of interventions to improve the quality of strategic marketing decisions and consequently firm performance. Despite extensive interventionist efforts focussed primarily upon application of theory derived from large organisation studies, the small business sector continues to be plagued by high failure rates and poor performance levels. In this study, a comprehensive literature review and a series of six in‐depth interviews are used to develop a theoretical research framework for the strategic marketing decision‐making process in small business. Second, 46 strategic marketing decisions drawn from 32 small businesses are examined within the context of the research framework and, finally, a model of strategic marketing decision‐making process in small business is proposed. The core of the model is a series of three loosely defined steps or tasks (“information gathering/research”, “financial analyses and assessments” and “”internal matters”), which are conducted non‐sequentially but preceded by “decision initiation” and followed by “final commitment”. Furthermore, the key “methods” used in carrying out these steps or tasks are identified and classified into learned competencies, inherent competencies, internal networks and external networks.