Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: A, University of South Central Los Angeles, course: Marketing Management, language: English, abstract: Marketing Information Systems support marketing management in strategic, control and operational decision-making. A Marketing Information System has four main components: Internal Reporting System, Marketing Research Systems, Intelligence Systems and Marketing Models. An organization should have an Internal Reporting System that allows it to gather information on its daily operations in order to find out customers patterns to pinpoint their wants, preferences and behavior. Marketing Intelligence implies regularly collecting information so as to get to know what is going on in the economic and business environment. It can be used within the scope of ethics and legality to know consumers thinking and perception about the company and its products or services. Marketing Models help in interpreting information to support decision making but caution is needed so as to avoid overestimation or underestimation in forecasting that can lead to bad decisions. Mathematical figures should not overshadow human behavior especially the dynamics of consumer behavior. If a company cannot answer a marketing question using its Internal Reporting System, Marketing Intelligence and Marketing Models, the last resort is Marketing Research. Unlike Marketing Intelligence which is less specific in its purposes and conducted by a manager, Marketing Research is more specific in its purposes and is conducted by marketing researchers. It can be used to hear customers voice in regards with their wants, preferences and behavior so as allow marketing manager make adequate decisions.