Failing to understand your customers can waste marketing resources and create a useless strategy, leaving your company with lackluster results. And social media content and digital initiatives aren’t enough to create influence or growth. When done right, marketing has the ability to make a real impact. But it needs the fuel from customer insights, value communication, and strategies powered by consumer behavior. Without them, you’ll build your marketing efforts on shaky ground.
Improve your marketing function with professors Stefan Michel and Lisa Duke’s business-focused and practical approach, value-based tools, and their unique one-page visual marketing plan that’s proven to help leverage your strategies for success. Written in a language you can understand, this is your ultimate guide to evidence-based decision-making in your marketing strategy to deliver better customer insights, solutions, and prices.
You’ll discover:
– Customer-based measurements to help you optimize your marketing return-on-investment (ROI).
– The power of value-based pricing to improve your profit and avoid margin erosion.
– Key success factors in your defined market to close more sales and put your company ahead of the competition.
– How to generate relevant customer insights by linking product attributes to benefits to values.
– A simple-yet-comprehensive one-page marketing plan for your firm, your brand, and your product.
Master every marketing and strategy challenge with a data-informed focus on impact throughout each process with this step-by-step learning journey for reflective executives and entrepreneurs. Get Real Impact Marketing now to align your customer insights with your marketing goals and drive measurable success for your company.
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

You can also buy the book on Barnes & Nobles, Book Depository, Orell Füssli and Routledge.
Set in 2024, the case describes the trajectory of Nike's success and how it had recently lost its way. The company was experiencing its worst slump in more than 10 years. Since 2020, CEO Donahoe oversaw a significant shift away from wholesale, wit...
In 2024, the management of Aluminium Cyclo Enterprises (ACE), was concerned that the European Union (EU) export rules for ferrous and non-ferrous scrap were becoming more restrictive. Not just the EU, but close to 43 countries had restricted the e...
Women make more than 80% of purchasing decisions, but most brands struggle to reach, engage, and convert female customers. Do this short quiz to test your knowledge of marketing to women, and read on for tips on avoiding the pitfalls.

Explore how innovation, R&D, and policy reforms are reshaping China’s pharmaceutical sector amid rising healthcare demand and demographic shifts.
As AI systems become increasingly adept at generating creative content across multiple modalities, Michael Yaziji identifies six new roles the marketing manager can undertake to become the orchestrator of an infinitely productive AI team.

Taking up a new leadership post can mean a dramatic shift in the way others see you – and how you define yourself. It is vital to learn how to separate your true self from the demands and expectations of the role.

Campaign failures at Apple, Bud Light, & Jaguar show why boards must prioritize marketing oversight. Insights from Su-mei Thompson.
In late 2022, Tim Kuniskis, CEO of the Dodge brand (part of the Netherlands-based Stellantis automobile corporation), announced that 2023 would be the last production year for its popular “muscle car” models, the Dodge Charger and Challenger. Thes...
BARCELONA, JANUARY 2023. What started in 2016 as a humble entrepreneurial attempt to contribute to a more sustainable future had turned into a solid eyewear brand present in major Western markets. François van den Abeele was even more excited by t...
The Swiss start-up Planted makes plant-based meat substitutes with remarkable environmental benefits. Its “beef” requires 97% less CO2 and 81% less water than meat from cows, while its “chicken,” also from pea protein, involves 77% less CO2 and 81...
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Case reference: IMD-2665 ©2025
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in I by IMD Brain Circuits 15 April 2025
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in I by IMD
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in Binder, Julia Katharina (Ed.); Haanaes, Knut Bjarne (Ed.) / Leading the sustainable business transformation: A playbook from IMD, pp. 151-165 / Hoboken: Wiley, 2025
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications