Exploring the relationship between marketing and operations: Neural network analysis of marketing decision impacts on delivery performance

This study has the objective of exploring the relationship between two functional areas: marketing and operations. This relationship has been the focus of attention of other scholars, but much remains to be done in terms of providing a better understanding of it. To help fill this gap, we analyze the impact of marketing decisions on delivery performance. More specifically, we seek to know how sales, sellers, promotion and other variables that characterize marketing decisions impact delivery performance. We collected data about marketing decisions and delivery performance for a period of 30 months in a large manufacturing company in Brazil. We performed an artificial neural network analysis to assess how these marketing decision variables impact delivery performance variables in the company analyzed. Results show that seller characteristics are the variables that have the greatest impact on the performance of delivery operations.