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For many marketers, the world of corporate finance, and shareholder value in particular, remains a peripheral issue. Accordingly, marketing's influence at the top management and board level continues to languish. A more synergistic marketing–finance relationship, we argue, rests on answers to two questions: What can marketing do for shareholder value; and what can a shareholder value approach do for marketing? Some valuable work on how marketing contributes to shareholder value has been conducted. But marketing's failure to incorporate current financial valuation techniques and properly demonstrate its contribution to financial market performance suggests that the latter question remains open. We address this question and set out a framework for understanding the contribution shareholder value can make to marketing. Particular emphasis is placed on the opportunities that arise for marketing from embracing and incorporating shareholder value principles and metrics.

Increasingly, the rhetoric used by top managers and boards is that the primary task of management is to maximize returns to shareholders (Black et al., 2001). There is growing acceptance by today's executives that unless they demonstrate their ability to enhance shareholder value, they will be replaced, new capital will be difficult to obtain, and their business will be put at risk. Day and Fahey (1988) and Srivastava et al. (1998) have shown that marketing can greatly enhance shareholder value. One might therefore expect, given the pivotal importance of creating shareholder value, that marketing has a powerful influence on strategic policy. There is in fact no evidence that this is happening. Many authors argue that marketing's influence on business strategy is at best marginal. They claim that marketing does not shape the way businesses are run, is given insufficient attention at the board level, and the few business decisions over which it does exercise strategic influence are limited in scope. Indeed, Webster (1997) maintains that marketing has surrendered its strategic responsibilities to other organizational functions that do not prioritise the customer. Serious concerns about marketing's strategic role, and even its identity and organizational impact, have also been expressed by Day and Montgomery (1999), Varadarajan and Jayachandran (1999), Srivastava et al. (1998), Hunt (1992), and Day (1992). Such has been the decline in marketing's strategic influence that marketing is even claimed to be experiencing a “crisis” (e.g., Brown, 1995 and Brownlie et al., 1994). We contend that marketing's lack of strategic influence within organizations will continue to happen until marketing has a better understanding of what shareholder value is and how it provides opportunities for the discipline to engage in a meaningful performance dialog with top management. The quality of, and motivation for, such a dialog depends on fully understanding the marketing–finance interface, which is centered on the interdependence between the marketing function and shareholder value Day and Fahey, 1988, Doyle, 2000, Srivastava et al., 1998 and Srivastava et al., 1999. This understanding, we believe, rests on answers to two questions: What can marketing do for shareholder value; and what can a shareholder value approach do for marketing? Regarding the first question, we now have a better understanding of what marketing can do for shareholder value. The analysis of shareholder value is based on a well-founded body of financial theory (see Black et al., 2001, Copeland et al., 2000, Martin and Petty, 2000 and Rappaport, 1998), which states that the value of a business is increased when managers make decisions that increase the discounted value of all future cash flows. Srivastava et al., 1998 and Srivastava et al., 1999 developed a framework that makes more explicit the contribution of marketing to shareholder returns. The framework demonstrates how marketing accelerates and enhances cash flow. Marketing has failed, however, to consider the importance and implications of the second question: what can shareholder value do for marketing? Modern marketing's reluctance to fully incorporate current financial valuation techniques and, thus, properly quantify its contribution to financial market performance has made it a bystander in many boardrooms. The criteria used by marketing for judging the true financial success of a marketing strategy, or comparing strategic alternatives, remain incomplete and inadequate (cf. Day and Wensley, 1988). This, in turn, means it is difficult to accept marketing recommendations on product policy, pricing, promotions, or, indeed, any aspect of the marketing function. The purpose of this article is to set out a framework for understanding the contribution of shareholder value to marketing. Particular emphasis is placed on the opportunities that arise for marketing from embracing and incorporating shareholder value principles and metrics. We propose that if these opportunities are seized, then marketing can begin to exercise strategic and managerial influence within the firm commensurate with its importance. We begin with an explanation of shareholder value analysis, including its philosophical underpinnings and components, followed by an evaluation of its metrics. We then present a framework that uncovers five opportunities that a shareholder value approach offers marketing. The article concludes by recognizing some of the potential pitfalls of shareholder value analysis, but it also argues that marketing can play a role in reducing the impact of these concerns. We also provide a discussion of some of the key research issues that emerge from our framework.

We would like to reiterate at this point that, just as the shareholder approach needs marketing (Srivastava et al., 1998), the reverse is equally true: Marketing needs shareholder value. Our framework demonstrates this fundamental truth. Its overriding message is that the shareholder value approach, if adopted, empowers marketing to assert its role within the organization in ways meaningful to executive management and owners. We now discuss the preconditions for accepting these opportunities, as well as the constraints that may impede their realization. We conclude with a discussion of key research issues entailed in our framework. 5.1. The challenges of using the framework If marketers are to embrace our opportunity framework, they need to acknowledge two fundamental aspects of shareholder value. One is that the primary obligation of managers is to maximize the returns for shareholders of the business. The other is that the stock market value of the company's shares is based on investors' expectations of the cash-generating abilities of the business. This then leads to the view that marketing's task is about developing strategies that maximize the value of these cash flows and, hence, shareholder value, over time. This reevaluation of marketing's objective necessitates a reformulation of the discipline as being about developing and managing market-based assets (see Srivastava et al., 1998). The achievement of this objective requires, in turn, a recognition of the preeminence of some basic principles and processes. The principles are the strategic foundations upon which value is determined. These are, first, targeting those markets where positive economic returns can be made and, second, developing a competitive advantage that enables both customers and the firm to create value. The processes are the activities necessary to implement the beliefs and principles. These concern how strategies should be developed, resources allocated, and performance evaluated—each of these needs to be tied to the objective of maximizing shareholder value. It needs to be stressed that, even where marketers attempt to capitalize on the opportunities that we have presented here, they should not assume that there will be some kind of magical improvement in their status and influence. The opportunities outlined in our framework work best in a company that adopts a shareholder value approach in its entirety rather than in a purely rhetorical sense. Too often, companies claim to be committed to shareholder value, but they do not really include the long-term perspective which is at its heart. In some companies, shareholder value has become synonymous with rationalization and downsizing. Other companies that claim to have a commitment to value-based planning have surrendered this function to finance. Lacking the concepts and experience to build value through strategies to develop competitive advantage and growth, financial directors have relied upon what they can control. Their concept of value, and strategies by which it can be achieved, are limited in scope. In both cases, the essence of shareholder value does not really exist. In such situations, the challenge for marketing would be to become the apostle within the organization for the shareholder value approach—a situation that may prove beyond them (see Anderson, 1982). Nevertheless, the position of marketing will still be improved if it takes advantage of the framework, because it will have a language with which it can explain its proposals and demonstrate the importance of its assets, and because it will begin to make explicit, in quantifiable terms, its contribution to organizational performance.