The influence of marketing costs in decision making: margins and results

Abstract

The accounting principles, related to allocation of costs, points out that an output is allocated to those costs

related to its economic transformation. This leave out of the normative allocation process all the costs related to the area of commercialization and those administration costs which are not related in a direct or indirect way to the assets obtained or services rendered. In the current environment of markets, the marketing costs takes on major importance reaching in one line of products commercialized in the United States, the 50% of the total costs, and reaching jointly the 20% of the gross national product. For the determination of commercial margins in determined enterprises, the marketing costs have been allocated, in an arbitrary manner, to the products according to a series of allocation keys; a very common one of these series are the sold physical or monetary units of each product. If we continue with this approach we can find distortions in the obtained margins and results related to the profitability of products, clients, markets, etc. The objective of this work is to analyze the marketing costs and use of others cost targets, as well as the relative to the product, not to mention the contribution the Activity Based Costing (ABC) can make to this subject. Thus, the obtained information will let us, from management control perspective, to help to eliminate the risk en business decision making.