Marketing and Financial Management: A Dichotomy of Two Academic Disciplines—A Conceptual Review

Abstract

Marketing and financial management have traditionally developed as separate academic and managerial domains, even though both shape firm value. This conceptual review examines how the two functions can be linked through a clearer set of constructs, mechanisms, and testable propositions. A transparent integrative review protocol was used to identify foundational and recent peer-reviewed work on the marketing–finance interface, marketing capability, customer lifetime value, brand and trademark valuation, cross-functional integration, digital transformation, and sustainable performance. The revised Integrated Marketing–Financial Management Framework (IMFMF) distinguishes marketing capability and financial management capability as functional resources, Strategic Resource Integration (SRI) as the cross-functional decision process that connects them, Digital Business Transformation (DBT) as an enabling condition, and Sustainable Organisational Performance (SOP) as a multidimensional outcome comprising economic, customer, environmental, and social performance. Eight propositions specify direct, mediated, and moderated relationships while recognising trade-offs arising from short-term financial controls, excessive marketing expenditure, weak data quality, and organisational complexity. The framework differs from general strategic-alignment models by focusing specifically on the conversion of customer-related market assets into financially disciplined resource-allocation decisions and by identifying measurable indicators for each construct. It contributes a bounded explanation of when marketing–finance integration is likely to improve performance and offers an implementation sequence based on joint budgeting, shared scorecards, integrated data governance, and post-investment review.