ABSTRACT
Marketing due diligence begins with explicating the strategy, which is often implicit and unclear even to those who need to implement it. The financial due diligence process, for all its rigour and detail, only really considers the tangible aspects of a company's valuation. The importance of marketing strategy arises from the fact that, in anything but the most embryonic or regulated of markets, there are competitors and different types of customers. While market risk is a function of both market choice and strategy design, share risk flows solely from the strategic decisions on which the plan is based. Market risk flows from the strategic decision to allocate resources to a market and assumptions about that market. Once market, share and profit risk assessments are completed, the result is a quantitative assessment, albeit based on careful, semi-qualitative judgements of each risk.
