This chapter describes how your company operates as well as the decisions you will have to make each period. Before making dramatic changes, you should try to get a feel for the behavior of the market. Do not jump hastily to conclusions and bear in mind that obvious solutions may be based upon an incomplete analysis. To reach more robust decisions, use the information from your company results, from the market news and from market research studies to analyze your situation and past competitive behavior. These reports are described in the chapter entitled Understanding Your Annual Report.
You will manage the Marketing department as a profit center. We will see in the next paragraphs that most of your decisions will cost you money: advertising budgets, commercial team expenditures, R&D expenses, etc. We will recap these costs at the end of the chapter and we will explain where your money comes from.