Recent concerns have focused on the adequacy of the
power of Marketing Departments to implement the marketing
concept and to put into effect marketing plans and strategies.
The article analyzes the marketing function as an information
processing activity, where one significant element of infor
mation processing is sales forecasting as an uncertainty ab
sorption process. The major hypothesis is that the power of
the Marketing Department can be partially explained by its
control of sales forecasting, both directly but also indirectly
through a set of strategic contingencies which make
marketplace uncertainty critical to the firm. The argument is
supported by empirical data from a study of manufacturing
firms in the United Kingdom, and leads to the identification
of a number of implications for managers and researchers.
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