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The study here helps to fill the gap between the current practices of management performance audits for firms and government agencies. The study advances recent theories of program evaluation and marketing management auditing. While the application in this chapter refers to government agencies managing destination marketing programs (tourism agencies), the algorithmic model construction is applicable for all management audits. The study applies the perspectives from two streams of theory to describe five relevant activities for managing destination marketing programs: scanning, planning, implementation, assessing, and administering. The analysis proposes impact assessments to improve management performances of DMOs via checklists for assessing the quality of information in tourism-management performance audits. Checklists can serve as a management tool by management performance auditors and by DMO executives to enhance the quality in executing destination marketing programs. A meta-evaluation of 10 tourism management audit reports identifies good and bad practices. The findings indicate that substantial improvements are possible in the practice of DMO’s management performance auditing, and the proposed checklist may ensure both high quality performance audit reports and improved performances in DMO practices.

A meta-evaluation is an assessment of evaluation practices. Meta-evaluations include assessments of validity and usefulness of two or more studies that focus on the same issues. Every performance audit is grounded explicitly or implicitly in one or more theories of program evaluation. A deep understanding of alternative theories of program evaluation is helpful to gain clarity about sound auditing practices. We present a review of several theories of program evaluation.

This study includes a meta-evaluation of seven government audits on the efficiency and effectiveness of tourism departments and programs. The seven tourism-marketing performance audits are program evaluations for: Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Australia, and two for Hawaii. The majority of these audits are negative performance assessments. Similarly, although these audits are more useful than none at all, the central conclusion of the meta-evaluation is that most of these audit reports are inadequate assessments. These audits are too limited in the issues examined; not sufficiently grounded in relevant evaluation theory and practice; and fail to include recommendations, that if implemented, would result in substantial increases in performance.

The present chapter includes a case study that describes and analyzes three performance audit reports over a three decade period for one U.S. state government's destination management organization's (DMO) actions and outcomes. This report extends prior studies (Woodside & Sakai, 2001, 2003) that support two conclusions: (1) the available independent performance audits of DMOs’ actions and outcomes indicate that frequently DMOs perform poorly and fail to meaningfully assess the impacts of their own actions and (2) the audits themselves are shallow and often fail to provide information on DMOs’ actions and outcomes relating to these organizations largest marketing expenditures. The chapter calls for embracing a strategy shift in designing program evaluations by both government departments responsible for managing destinations’ tourism marketing programs and all government auditing agencies in conducting future management performance audits. The chapter offers a “tourism performance audit template” as a tool for both strategic planning by destination management organizations and for evaluating DMOs’ planning and implementing strategies. The chapter includes an appendix – a training exercise in using the audit template and invites the reader to download a tourism performance audit report of a destination marketing organization and to apply the template after reading the report.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the concept of social theories to explain auditors’ attitude toward balance time between marketing activities and auditing responsibilities.

Data were collected through a survey, from which a measure of auditor’s view on the importance of marketing was identified and regressed against balance between audit time and marketing activities. In addition, a measure of balanced attitude of auditors toward the time of the audit and marketing activities was identified and regressed against attitude toward the importance of corporate governance mechanisms.

The results obtained from the hypothesis test indicated that the audit fee can be a decisive factor in the status of auditors to carry out their function in the social structure which is limited to the stakeholders. The balance time between auditing and marketing is of the same importance to all auditors. Furthermore, entrepreneur auditors find the present corporate governance good for the prosperity and creativity of the forces within the auditing firms. As a result, entrepreneur auditors are very effective in corporate governance mechanisms.

The most significant contribution of the present study is the development of auditing literature to better understand and analyze the behavior of auditors.

The marketing audit is widely accorded an important diagnostic role in the marketing management process. In theory, it should represent the starting‐point for most considered courses of managerial action in marketing. Yet, in practice there is some confusion, not only about the general process by means of which to perform the audit in particular organizations and on what issues it should focus, but also about the thinking processes that underpin the audit methodology. Attempts to throw some light on those matters. Looks at the design of marketing audits and provides a set of guidelines to help to make the audit process more effective.

The element most common to marketing strategies and tactics among companies in the 1980's is the rate at which they become out of date. The rapid changes in interest rates, employment, fuel costs, international exchange rates, technology, competitive offerings, consumer tastes, as well as the many other elements in the macro environment quickly make today's marketing activities obsolete. Unfortunately, all too often many companies do not readily recognize how these changes have diminished the effectiveness of their otherwise carefully nurtured marketing programmes. For example, they see falling sales and undertake changing salesmen's compensation schemes or reorganizing sales territories. Alternatively, the distribution channel or pricing policies may receive the focus of attention as sales languish. The element or elements of the marketing mix to get evaluated closely is often the result of a managerial hunch or predisposition to believe that a certain functional area is primarily responsible for the faultering performance. Rarely do the managers step back and question the basic assumptions underlying the grand strategic design or see how the system is operating as an integrated whole. A special evaluation procedure, however, has been developed to do this. It is called a marketing audit.

Marketing is innovative thinking and inventive doing for many organizations. Most noncommercial organizations and small businesses are exploring formal marketing concepts and methods for the first time. Industrial and high technology companies are becoming more sensitive to their customers and competitors and, therefore, to marketing efforts. Environmental uncertainty and pressures have challenged conventional practices in traditionally marketing‐oriented industries such as retailing and packaged goods.

Marketing performance assessment has been a major concern and remains a vital issue for companies and professionals. This paper aims to revisit the theme of marketing audits and propose a methodological approach aimed to evaluate marketing practice at the light of the processes involved.

The paper is structured in three parts. It begins with an overview of marketing audit’s theoretical domain. Then, the rationale, content and implementation of the instrument are presented. Finally, the work’s main motivations and implications are discussed.

To turn assessment into a useful exercise, it is necessary the existence of a framework allowing a common language for describing marketing practice. The author believes that a structured approach for evaluating marketing processes can decisively influence marketing effectiveness.

This work provided a theoretically anchored methodology for evaluating marketing practice. As such, it lays down the foundations for further research on the relevance of the selected processes and how they translate in future consequences for the business.

The view presented is intended to draw attention to the need for assessing the way marketing is executed, providing an instrument that helps professionals to better develop their activity and improve their contribution to business success.

Most existing marketing performance measures focus on outputs. However, results, per se, say little about the reasons of success or failure. This paper reinforces the importance of marketing audits as a tool to evaluate the way marketing processes are developed within an organization

Despite the importance of the ability of service firms to rationalise their service ranges in today's competitive environment, the area of service elimination decision‐making is one of the least researched in the literature on services marketing. Responding to this knowledge gap, this paper reports part of the findings of a broader exploratory investigation into the service elimination process in the British financial services sector. In detail, the paper presents qualitative and quantitative empirical evidence on the way in which British financial institutions audit their service range in order to identify financial services as candidates for elimination. The evidence showed that the British financial institutions studied follow a periodically conducted service range auditing process, which is often documented and computer‐aided. The audit is operationalised by a set of financial and non‐financial audit criteria (performance dimensions). The evidence also showed that the service range auditing process is not static but dynamic. As such, the relative importance of the audit criteria used varies in relation to service‐specific, organisational and environmental variables, such as type of financial service, business strategy pursued overall, degree of market orientation, intensity of competition, intensity of legislation and rhythm of technological change.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how auditors’ professional and organizational identities are associated with commercialization in audit firms. Unlike previous studies exploring the consequences of commercialization in the firms, the study directs its attention toward the potential driver of commercialization, which the authors argue to be the identities of the auditors.

The paper is based on 374 responses to a survey distributed to 3,588 members of FAR, the professional association of accountants, auditors and advisors in Sweden. The study used established measures of organizational and professional identity and introduced market, customer and firm process orientation as aspects of commercialization. The study explored the data through descriptive statistics, principle component analysis and correlation analysis and tested the hypotheses with multiple linear regression analysis.

The findings indicated that the organizational identity of auditors has a positive association with three aspects of commercialization: market orientation, customer orientation and firm process orientation. Contrary to the arguments based on prior literature, the study has found that the professional identity of auditors is also a positively associated with commercialization. This indicates a change of the role of professional identity vis-à-vis commercialization of audit firms. The positive association between professional identity and commercial orientation could indicate the development of “organizational professionalism.” The study also found differences between the association between professional identity and commercialization in Big 4 and non-Big 4 firms. While in Big 4 firms, professional identity is positively associated only with the firm’s process orientation, in non-Big 4 firms, professional identity has a positive association with all three aspects of commercialization.

The paper provides insight into how auditors’ identities have influenced commercialization of audit firms and into the normalizing of commercialization within auditing. The study also developed a new instrument for measuring commercialization, one based on market, customer and firm process orientation concepts. This paper suggests that this instrument is an alternative to the observation through proxies.