5. Discussion and conclusion
M&A has been a topic of considerable interest to researchers in a wide range of disciplines for several decades. Numerous studies have been published on post-merger performance in leading Finance, Accounting and Strategic Management journals. Despite the large body of literature, it is still very difficult to draw a definite conclusion as to the effect of M&A on firm financial performance. What is even more noteworthy is that marketing performance, which is one dimension of financial performance, has remained largely unexplored. The main objective of this study was to fill this gap in the literature by examining post-merger marketing efficiency. The small number of studies that have investigated post-merger marketing performance took a narrow approach to measure post-merger performance focusing only on a single variable, either sales or market share. Furthermore, this approach meant that these studies measured the effect of M&A only on marketing outputs, while ignoring marketing inputs such as expenditure on advertising, selling and distribution. In contrast, this study measured the effect of M&A both on marketing inputs, i.e. costs, and marketing outputs, i.e.revenue, leading to an assessment of the effect on the overall marketing efficiency of the merged firms.
