Evaluation of marketing practices and marketing performance measurements undertaken by quantity surveying consultancy firms in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Marketing is now recognised as one of the important functions necessary to meet the unprecedented challenges faced by a firm. This concept can be suggested as an answer to the professional firms to sustain demand, growth, and profitability. Although marketing is the management process responsible for identifying and satisfying clients’ requests, and profitably, Quantity Surveyors (QSs) still have a limited understanding of marketing and how it is implemented in the changing and challenging market conditions to enhance business growth. Hence, this research paper aims to evaluate the formalised marketing practices and marketing performance measurement systems used in Quantity Surveying Consultancy Firms (QSCFs) in Sri Lanka. After a thorough literature review of formalised marketing practices, endeavours were made to discover the realism and their importance to QSCFs in Sri Lanka through a questionnaire survey. A total of 31 responses were accounted for the analysis of 12 QSCFs in Sri Lanka. The findings revealed that the adoption of the ‘marketing practices’ in the Quantity Surveying (QS) business is still in its formative stage. However, the majority of respondents recognised the importance of adopting marketing activities as a business development activity. Quality service delivery, measuring customer satisfaction, and personal relationship management activities seem to be the critical marketing practices for QSCFs in Sri Lanka. At present, the majority of QSCFs pay minimum attention to measuring the performance of marketing outcomes using advance measurement indicators, but most respondents strongly agreed on the performance measurement of marketing practices will help to enhance their business success.