A  Do you think you're a master of multi-tasking? Think again. Unless you are one of the three percent of super-taskers in the population, research shows that your brain is incapable of paying close attention to more than one complex task at a time. Researchers who study attention say that effective multi-tasking is beyond most of us. Psychiatrist Edward M Hallowell describes multi-tasking as a mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously as effectively as they can perform one.

B  You can check email while eating lunch, or listen to music while walking, because innate activities such as walking, chewing and breathing do not require close attention. Reading, texting or driving do. Associate Professor Paul E Dux explains that attention has capacity limitations, and people perform a single task better than multiple complex tasks concurrently.

C  David Strayer and his team observed 56,000 drivers approaching an intersection and found that the majority talking on a phone failed to stop in accordance with traffic laws, whether the phone was handheld or hands-free. Performance deteriorates when attention is split: more mistakes are made and tasks take longer. Brain scans also show that the left and right sides of the prefrontal cortex work together on one task but independently when two tasks are attempted. Etienne Koechlin says people may be in trouble trying to juggle more than two tasks because we have only two frontal lobes.

D  Koechlin’s imaging studies found no difference between men and women in the ability to switch between tasks. Other researchers studying real-life situations such as finding lost keys think women may use better strategies, whereas men tend to act with less organisation and reflection. Professor Keith Laws says men often do not stop to reflect and plan. Even so, nobody can juggle two, never mind three, complex tasks at the same time.

E  David Strayer’s research found that a small number of people possess extraordinary multi-tasking ability. These super-taskers show different brain activity, with less activity in the prefrontal cortex during multi-tasking. Strayer suggests pilots of high-performance aircraft, high-end chefs and elite emergency-room doctors may be more likely to be super-taskers, and such people may rise to top positions in occupations demanding simultaneous attention to many tasks.

F  The ability to multi-task probably comes down to DNA inherited from parents. Strayer says people are either born with the neural structure that lets them overcome usual multi-tasking challenges or they are not. Super-taskers’ brains are doing something most people cannot do.

A For the early practitioners of marketing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the business of selling was simply a matter of continually finding new customers. By contrast, marketing managers in the current era recognise the importance of gathering information about the market and potential customers. They recognise that if companies are to be profitable, customers must gain and retain their perceptions of value from the brands they buy over a long time frame, rather than from a single transaction. This also means that customers must see value in returning continually to the stores where they shop, as well as to the service providers they deal with.

B Marketing practitioners and marketing scientists have never worked more closely than they currently do. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that this is the information age where the convergence in telecommunications, media and technology is causing old ways to be challenged, and new methods and tools to be tested. Customer expectations have risen as new technologies allow for new approaches. For instance, the subscriber-TV music channel Channel [V] encourages its viewers to sign up for text messages and email alerts that tell them when their favourite artists and songs are about to be broadcast. Competitive advantage lies in being able to recognise which customers can be given greater attention, not just because they demand it but because it makes commercial sense to provide high levels of product quality and service.

C Modern marketing information systems rely on information technology to enable marketing intelligence to be gathered and to store and analyse marketing research information. While some of the information used is gathered by government bodies such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Statistics New Zealand, most of it is purposefully gathered by marketing organisations for client companies. In the process, computer technology is used to manipulate the data and then to present the information in such a way that allows executives to readily identify any problems or issues, and quickly arrive at solutions.

D In order to produce superior value and satisfaction for customers, marketing managers need information at almost every turn. They need information about customers both end-users and resellers – as well as competitors and other forces in the marketplace. One marketing executive put it this way: “To manage a business well is to manage its future; and to manage the future is to manage information.” Increasingly, marketers are viewing information not just as an input for making better decisions but also as an important strategic asset and marketing tool. As household incomes increase, choice widens and buyers become better discriminating, so sellers need information about how buyers respond to different products and advertising campaigns.

E The supply of information has also increased greatly. It has been suggested by the futurist and best-selling author John Naisbitt that the United States and, by observation, developed countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are moving from industrial to information-based economies. These post-industrial economies earn 70-80% of their Gross Domestic Product from services, and have entered what some commentators have termed the ‘Information Age’ or the ‘Information Technology Era’.

F One study found that with all the information now available through supermarket scanners, a packaged goods product controller is bombarded with one million to one billion new numbers each week. As Naisbitt points out: “Running out of information is not a problem, but drowning in it is.” Yet marketers frequently complain that they lack information of the right kind but have plenty of the wrong kind, or they claim that marketing information is so widely spread throughout the organisation that it takes great effort to locate even simple facts. In addition, subordinates may withhold information they believe will reflect badly on their performance and important information often arrives too late to be useful, or on-time information is not accurate. So marketing managers need better information. Although marketing organisations have greater capacity to provide managers with information, they often do not use it well. As a result, many marketing organisations are now studying their managers’ information needs and designing information systems specifically to meet those needs.

G One solution is to use a Marketing Information System (MIS). This consists of people, equipment and procedures which, when put together, are able to gather, analyse, evaluate and distribute needed, timely and accurate information to marketing decision-makers. The MIS begins and ends with marketing managers. First, it interacts with these managers to assess the information needs they have. Next, it develops the needed information from internal records, marketing intelligence activities and the research process. The analysis unit processes the data to make it more useful and, finally, the MIS distributes it to managers in the right form and at the right time to help them make better marketing decisions.

H However, the costs of obtaining, processing, storing and delivering information can mount quickly. In some cases, additional information will do little to change or improve a manager’s decision, or the costs of acquiring the information will exceed the returns from the improved decision. For example, if an organisation estimates that launching a new product without any further information will yield a profit of $500,000, then it would be foolish to spend $30,000 for additional information that would increase the profit to only $525,000. By itself information is valueless – its value comes from its use.