MARKETING METRICS APPLICABILITY AND PRACTICALITY IN BANKING

This research seeks close pedagogical and professional gaps in the application and usage of the marketing metrics, by giving recommendations. There is much pessimism associated with the marketers when making corporate quantitative financial measurements through marketing metrics. The marketers’ voice is left unheard and usually the financial management tasks are left in the hands of the accountants and financial analysts. Questions are raised as to whether these metrics are applicable and usable in organisations such as a bank to optimise its performance. Substantive domain in this study is to make contribution to marketing theory in that it identifies the need for the voice of marketers through appreciation by management through use of marketing metrics results. The interpretivist paradigm was used to guide the study. In this research top three managers (Finance, Marketing and Accounting) of a Zimbabwean commercial bank, were interviewed. The data collection instruments were the open ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, which permit the participants to say what they want about the phenomenon under study, permitting thorough expression of opinion. To further enrich the validity of the research results, document analysis was also undertaken, using a coding system to classify the results. The findings were that there was limited application of the marketing metrics including results adoption. The major recommendation was that management needed to recognise the value of the marketing metrics results in order to optimize the commercial bank’s business performance.