Marketing, Planning And Strategy
Marketing, Planning And Strategy
Over the years marketers have been presented with a series of philosophical
approaches to marketing decision making. One widely used approach is the
marketing concept approach, which directs the marketer to develop the product
offering, and indeed the entire marketing program, to meet the needs of the customer
base. A key element in this approach is the need for information flow from
the market to the decision maker. Another approach is the systems approach, which
instructs the marketer to view the product not as an individual entity but as just
one aspect of the customer’s total need-satisfaction system. A third approach, the
environmental approach, portrays the marketing decision maker as the focal point
of numerous environments within which the firm operates and that affect the success
of the firm’s marketing program. These environments frequently bear such
labels as legal-political, economic, competitive, consumer, market structure,
social, technological, and international.
Indeed, these and other philosophical approaches to marketing decision
making are merely descriptive frameworks that stress certain aspects of the firm’s
role vis-à-vis the strategic planning process. No matter what approach a firm follows,
it needs a reference point for its decisions that is provided by the strategy
and the planning process involved in designing the strategy. Thus, the strategic
planning process is the guiding force behind decision making, regardless of the
approach one adopts. This relationship between the strategic planning process
and approaches to marketing decision making is depicted.
Planning perspectives develop in response to needs that arise internally or
that impinge on the organization from outside. During the 1950s and 1960s,
growth was the dominant fact of the economic environment, and the planning
processes developed during that time were typically geared to the discovery and
exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Decentralized planning was the
order of the day. Top management focused on reviewing major investment proposals
and approving annual operating budgets. Long-range corporate plans were occasionally put together, but they were primarily extrapolations and were
rarely used for strategic decision making.
Planning perspectives changed in the 1970s. With the quadrupling of energy
costs and the emergence of competition from new quarters, followed by a recession
and reports of an impending capital crisis, companies found themselves surrounded
by new needs. Reflecting these new management needs and concerns, a
process aimed at more centralized control over resources soon pervaded planning
efforts. Sorting out winners and losers, setting priorities, and conserving capital
became the name of the game. A new era of strategic planning dawned over corporate
America.
The value of effective strategic planning is virtually unchallenged in today’s
business world. A majority of the Fortune 1000 firms in the United States, for
instance, now have senior executives responsible for spearheading strategic planning
efforts.
Strategic planning requires that company assets (i.e., resources) be managed
to maximize financial return through the selection of a viable business in accordance
with the changing environment. One very important component of strategic
planning is the establishment of the product/market scope of a business. It is
within this scope that strategic planning becomes relevant for marketers.1 Thus,as companies adopted and made progress in their strategic planning capabilities,
a new strategic role for marketing emerged. In this strategic role, marketing concentrates
on the markets to serve, the competition to be tackled, and the timing of
market entry/exit.
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