Nontraceable common costs

One of the marketing costs whose allocation to specific marketing entities is highly arbitrary. For example, to allocate “corporate image” expenditures equally to all products and brands would be arbitrary, because all products do not get benefit equally. To allocate them proportionately to the sales of the various products would be arbitrary because relative product sales reflect many factors besides corporate image building. Other expenses are top management salaries, taxes, interests, and other overhead.