The comprehensiveness paradox: How intensified frictions undermine the value of marketing performance measurement systems

Marketing performance measurement systems (MPMS) offer many benefits, such as strengthening strategic alignment through monitoring, enhancing marketing capabilities and cross-departmental communication, improving marketing effectiveness and efficiency and increasing the credibility of marketing within a company. Nonetheless, managers often regard MPMS endeavours — especially comprehensive MPMS endeavours — as disappointing. In fact, more than 50 per cent of senior managers report disappointment in MPMS results, often due to strategic failures and ineffective orchestration. This paper identifies three reasons why comprehensive MPMS often fail to improve the ability to measure performance: poor contingency fit, ‘MPMS glass ceilings’ (legal/platform/method limits) and intensified socio-technical frictions. Based on 33 expert interviews and two focus groups, the paper focuses on intensified socio-technical frictions and conceptualises the ‘comprehensiveness paradox’: the phenomenon in which increasing the comprehensiveness of MPMS diminishes the ability to measure marketing communication mix performance. To this end, the paper identifies seven socio-technical conditions that help managers reduce the most common frictions. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.