The Role of Marketing

Since produce line planning bears so visibly on the company's future posture, the chief executive has a particular responsibility to expect that the marketing department will supply him with the data and the advice necessary for informed decisions as to what is to be produced, now and in the future.

Data Are Not Information
 The enormous prodigality of the computer has so accelerated the process of data accumulation that we often actually know less than we did before. Great masses of data are disgorged in impressively magnificent print-outs. Yet they seldom improve our grasp of the elaborately quantified situations they are depicted.

Data are not information. Information is not meaning. Just as data require processing to become informational, so information requires processing to become meaningful

Yet the more abundant the information, the less meaning it will yield. We know that the surest way to destroy a man's capacity for discrimination is to overwhelm his senses with the relevant stimuli. The greater the variety of food consumed at a meal, the less you appreciate each dish. The louder the noise, the less impressive the message.