How can a shareholder value approach improve marketing's strategic influence?

For many marketers, the world of corporate finance, and shareholder value in particular, remains a peripheral issue. Accordingly, marketing's influence at the top management and board level continues to languish. A more synergistic marketing-finance relationship, we argue, rests on answers to two questions: What can marketing do for shareholder value; and what can a shareholder value approach do for marketing? Some valuable work on how marketing contributes to shareholder value has been conducted. But marketing's failure to incorporate current financial valuation techniques and properly demonstrate its contribution to financial market performance suggests that the latter question remains open. We address this question and set out a framework for understanding the contribution shareholder value can make to marketing. Particular emphasis is placed on the opportunities that arise for marketing from embracing and incorporating shareholder value principles and metrics.