Mukesh Bhargava

Mukesh Bhargava is a toolmaker. The Oakland University associate professor of marketing labors with innovative research and strategic thinking. And his work may well transform the discipline.

Bhargava said that business functions such as production, engineering, and research and development all have come under the gun as companies seek to become leaner.

“Now marketing is under scrutiny in terms of what value it adds to an organization,” he said. To survive that scrutiny, marketing professionals need tools. Bhargava has given them some tools in a working paper for the Marketing Science Institute that looks at the process through which market-based assets are created. 

“The second work which I’ve just started is how to look at return on marketing investments,” he said. “What is the incremental value when you advertise and promote in the short-term and long-term? Since you know the quantities and you know the prices you can compute incremental revenues or returns minus the costs.”

With Bhargava’s tools, marketers can make their arguments for value-based spending not on untested theory but using their own data.

“Really, what we are trying to do is to develop a metric by which people can talk to the finance people, because often in large organizations, their language is the one that rules,” he said.

Call it a metric. Call it a tool. In the end, Bhargava’s work will enable marketing professionals to measure their efforts in terms that top management will appreciate and understand.