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Many small businesses and nonprofit organizations avoid doing marketing research because they have at least five misconceptions about it: the big decision myth; the survey myopia myth; the big bucks myth; the sophisticated researcher myth; and the most research is not read myth.

In today's world of little or no economic growth and rapid technological change, many companies are faced with declining product demand beyond their control. A study of the strategies of over 95 companies that confronted declining markets suggests that companies can often be very successful if they analyze all the characteristics that shape competition in the end game and act in accordance with their own needs. Strategic alternatives for declining business include leadership; niche; harvest; and quick divestment.

The quality of customer service is often as important as the quality of the product. A company can evaluate its customer service by performing a customer service audit. To effectively implement a customer service program the company should educate customers; educate employees; be efficient first, nice second; standardize service response systems; develop a pricing policy; involve subcontractors, if necessary; and evaluate the customer service operation.

A five-stage framework will help owners to determine their company's stage of development and how to ensure a profitable future. It is also useful to consultants and accountants in diagnosing problems and matching solutions to smaller organizations. The five stages are existence, survival, success (with the substages of disengagement and growth), take-off, and resource maturity. Each stage has an index of size, diversity, and complexity.

One way for companies to get reliable information about the economic risk of capital investment strategies is to use the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). It enables them to quantify risk and to link it with the returns they expect. Alaska Interstate, Inc. is one company that has used CAPM successfully to incorporate a consideration of risk into its strategic planning process.

The new commercial reality is the emergence of global markets for standardized consumer products on a previously unimagined scale of magnitude. Technology, by proletarianizing communication, transport, and travel drives the world toward a converging commonality. Well-managed companies have moved from emphasis on customizing items to offering globally standardized products that are advanced, functional, reliable, and low priced. They benefit from enormous economies of scale in production, distribution, marketing, and management.

Often an executive blames a stressful work situation and lack of time for his or her unsatisfactory home life. These can be the cause, but they are frequently alibis to cover up much more personal factors. To improve their situation, executives need to establish clear, concrete, and achievable goals and to monitor the achievement of these. Projects should be modest, yield results that are both measurable and fun, and involve another person to help the executive persist. Authentic behavior and clear communication, together with imagination and playfulness, are the keys to a satisfying life at home.

Companies increasingly rely on industrial distributors to sell their products. Products suitable for distributors usually: 1) have a large potential customer base, 2) are stockable, 3) are sold in small quantities, 4) are bought by people who are at low levels in their organizations, and 5) require rapid delivery and service. Companies should select distributors that serve the market segment, not just the geographic area, and are suited to where the product is in its life cycle.

Trade show expenditures are the major form of organized marketing communications activity for many companies outside of efforts by their sales force and distributors. Yet managers are frequently unenthusiastic about shows, despite the opportunities they offer for contact with existing and potential customers. This attitude is primarily due to the difficulty of measuring the success of any given trade show program in effectively and efficiently meeting a company's marketing needs. It is useful to classify trade shows in terms of their function, dividing them roughly into those where the major focus is selling activities and those where satisfaction of nonselling objectives is a likelier consequence of participation.

How does an organization decide which information processing project gets top priority? Many factors affect decisions on priorities, each in a different way, including financial benefits, business objectives, intangible benefits, and technical importance. The question of who should define information processing priorities further complicates the issue. Although the process of setting priorities is somewhat iterative, it involves eight discrete steps.

A growing business evolves by adapting to changes in its environment through its marketing function. Usually this function goes through four stages: entrepreneurial marketing; opportunistic marketing; responsive marketing; and diversified marketing.

A study of 40 successful companies with low market shares shows that long-run competitive success is feasible despite low-market-share position. Most of the profitable low-share companies in the study compete in stable environments that share certain characteristics. The competitive strategies of effective low-market-share companies also have much in common including: a strong focus tailored to differences in the market environment; a reputation for high quality; lower prices than competitors; and low total cost.

Some manufacturers hold and even increase profitability against international competitors because they change from a multidomestic strategy, which allows individual subsidiaries to compete independently in different domestic markets, to a global one, which pits the company's entire worldwide system of product and market position against the competition. Before forging a global strategy, a company that recognizes its business as potentially global should consider the following: what kind of strategic innovation might trigger global competition, what is the best position to establish among all competitors to defend the advantages of global strategy, and what kind of long-term resources will be required to establish the leading position? The examples of three companies (Caterpillar, L.M. Ericsson, and Honda) that successfully forged global strategies illustrate how companies can change the rules of international competition to their favor.

Effective management consulting has eight fundamental objectives: responding to a client's request for information; providing solutions to specific problems; giving an in-depth, accurate diagnosis; presenting a program of recommended corrective actions; implementing changes; building consensus and commitment; facilitating client learning; and enhancing organizational effectiveness.

A study of 793 U.S. and Canadian consumer and industrial markets indicates that barriers to entry are surmountable and that direct entry may be a viable alternative to corporate growth through acquisition and to development of present markets. The entrant faces six major classes of barriers: 1) economies of scale, 2) product differentiation, 3) absolute cost, 4) access to distribution, 5) capital requirement, and 6) incumbent reaction. Direct entrants reduce or avoid barriers by taking one of two strategic approaches: 1) reducing barriers by employing the same competitive strategy as incumbents, or 2) avoiding barriers by using a different strategy altogether.

Information technology alters the individual's relation to the task. The new relationship is called "computer-mediated." The computer mediation of simple jobs creates tasks that are routine and unchallenging, while demanding focused attention and abstract comprehension. The "information environment" refers to the quality of organizational life when the computer mediates jobs and influences both horizontal and vertical relationships. Computer mediation shifts the overall shape of the organization from a pyramid to a diamond because managers will perform a variety of tasks that others once did for them, thereby diminishing clerical support staff and swelling the number of professionals and middle managers.

A review of two decades of research shows that debt financing has a far lower payoff than many chief financial officers (CFOs) believe. CFOs determine a sensible debt policy that is in line with corporate strategy by following a recommended policy that considers: a company's particular financing needs; the lending criteria of target sources of capital; the implications of debt policy on strategy, competition, and shareholders; and the ease of implementation. Each CFO should determine the limit of debt's payoffs to the company and should recognize what conditions might push him or her to exceed that limit. Formulation of a solid plan ensures a steady flow of capital and secures top management's commitment to such a plan.

Almost all managers escape some job-induced anxieties by retreating into time consuming activities that entail fewer threats than more challenging executive activities. Much of executives' job anxiety is produced by three tasks: streamlining daily routines, meeting demands to improve performance, and getting subordinates to achieve better results.

Managers and subordinates often experience confusion about what style to use when they write letters and memorandums. They make revisions and rancor builds. Style is more than a matter of using words with appropriate denotations; it is also using words with appropriate connotations. Thus, style is partly a matter of tone. A workable definition of style in business writing is: that choice of words, sentences, and paragraph format which by virtue of being appropriate to the situation and to the power positions of both writer and reader produces the desired reaction and result.

Investments in plant and equipment are sensitive to differences in how managers view the importance of short- vs. long-term issues. Yet most managers depend on highly analytic techniques like discounted cash flow analysis to evaluate capital investment proposals, and these techniques are often biased against long-term investment. Such methods place most of their emphasis on net present value or internal rate of return calculations, and as their use has increased, the growth of capital investment and R&D spending in the United States has decreased. McKinsey Award Winner.