Managerial decision making in marketing: The next research frontier

Managerial decision making in marketing is the heart of the field. Strangely enough, academic work on this topic is scarce. Existing work on marketing decision making is either descriptive or takes an optimization approach, with the role of the marketing decision maker practically disappearing. There are excellent prospects for improvement, especially considering the recent work in behavioral decision making. Relevant topics are the dual-process model of decision making, learning, emotions, and expertise. We use this work to formulate interesting and relevant research questions about marketing decision making. There has also been significant progress in the methodologies for answering these questions; for example, better ways to monitor actual decision making and sophisticated behavioral laboratories and brain imaging methods.