Marketing Strategy and Wall Street: Nailing down Marketing's Impact

Stock prices are based in large part on corporate finan-cial statements, augmented by analysis by stock ana-lysts. The ultimate goal of any marketing expendi-ture should be to increase the value of the firm, but the road from marketing expenditure to stock price is usually cir-cuitous. This is because marketing’s path to financial impact is through revenues, and the road to revenues runs through the customer. Typically, a long chain of effects is involved to account for the impact of a marketing expendi-ture (Rust et al. 2004), and the effects of marketing invest-ments play out over time. This special issue focuses on exploring relationships along this chain from marketing actions to marketplace outcomes and the creation of market-based assets and firm value. In an effort to add greater clarity to and lend support to the exploration of these issues, the Marketing Science Insti-tute (MSI) and Emory Marketing Institute (EMI) organized