The Influence of Managers' Identity and the Role of Market Information in Strategic Marketing Decisions

Marketing managers are supposed to be highly professional in taking information about markets and customer preferences into account when making strategic decisions. However, following the literature on decision behavior, people constantly engage in identity-based decision making which leads to ignorance of relevant information. In the context of managerial decision making, such behavior might jeopardize a firm's market orientation. In three experiments the authors investigate managers' strategic decisions in marketing when one alternative is somehow related to the identity of the decision maker. The findings show that managers tend to make identity-based decisions and ignore relevant market information. Finally, evidence is demonstrated that managers misleadingly project their self-identity-driven preferences onto the preferences of the consumers which clearly points out a detrimental identity effect with regard to managerial decision making in marketing strategy.