ABSTRACT
Oxford Furnaces was a large, diversified engineering firm. It produced a variety of products, varying from complete machines to large engineering components, and exported a good deal of its output. Information about the performance of the industry was difficult to obtain. Oxford Furnaces could estimate how its market was changing only by discovering how many of the tenders it submitted were accepted. Oxford's decision is surprising because the firm claimed that both before and after devaluation it was opposed to reductions in sterling prices in the UK, and in foreign-currency prices overseas. Because earlier attempts to persuade its overseas representatives to provide more detailed market information of all kinds had been unsuccessful, Oxford relied heavily on the insights of the analysts in its headquarters. At the time of devaluation, Oxford's managers took marketing decisions on a piecemeal basis.
