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F i v e
Cha p te r

FIGURE 5.1 Major functional areas of manufacturing.

5.3.1 Marketing
Marketing acts as an enterprise’s primary contact with its customer
(Fig. 5.2). To help meet the key objectives of increasing product sales,
a number of functions are performed within marketing. These include
market research; forecasting demand and sales; analyzing sales; track-
ing performance of products, marketing segments, sales personnel,
and advertising campaigns; developing and managing marketing
channels; controlling profits and revenues; and managing sales per-
sonnel, sales plans, and promotion. Input comes from business man-
agement and customers. Output goes to customers, product develop-
ment, customer order servicing, and master production planning.
The information handling requirements of marketing include
monumental texts and graphics as well as queries and analysis of
internal and external data. The internal data is gathered through a
variety of software routines.