True or False? a Study of Falsehoods in Market Intelligence Dissemination Within Organizations

Abstract

The gap between the service customers expect and the service they experience is widening, even though many firms have proudly adopted the marketing concept of putting the customer first. Before finding solutions for this discrepancy, let us ask if companies are aware of this growing inconsistency? Or do firms just gather and work with the market information they like and refuse to deal with the data they don't like? Which customer insights arrive at the desk of managers? This study examines the organizational factors affecting how truthfully good and bad marketing news is disseminated throughout organizations. Based on Grice's (1975, 1989) conversational maxims, the authors develop a typology of falsehoods in marketing intelligence dissemination. They further develop and test an opportunity-motivation-justification model with data from 105 senior managers from a multinational company. Interestingly, their findings show that the organizational antecedents of market orientation do not affect the level of falsehoods in market intelligence dissemination. Employee's perception of the personal risk they run (motivation) and their assessment of organization's benefit (justification) do. When people are afraid of the personal risks they might incur by honestly communicating market updates, good news is disseminated less truthfully than bad news. And when people have doubts about the organizational benefits of truth telling, bad news gets communicated more truthfully.