Marketing budget.

The first 200 words of this essay...

Marketing budget

Setting the marketing budget

Sales forecasting

Producing a sales forecast

Test marketing

Why might forecasts be wrong?

The reliability of forecasts

Questions

Marketing budget

A marketing budget is a quantifiable target which is set by a firm and which relates to its marketing activities. It may involve a target level of sales for a particular product (a sales budget) or set out the amount a firm intends to spend to achieve its marketing objectives (an expenditure budget). The sales budgets may include targets for the absolute level of sales a firm would like to achieve, or for a desired level of market share; they may also include targets for particular regions or for particular types of customers or distribution channels. Marketing expenditure budgets, by comparison, set out the desired amount of spending on activities such as advertising, sales promotions, paying the sales force, direct mailings and market research.

The size of the sales budgets is likely to depend on:

* The level of sales a product has achieved in the past; a firm may extrapolate a future sales target based on past trends

* The