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Marketing planning process_GP4_ Final

The marketing planning process consists of distinct steps that transition from corporate vision to specific action plans. Key steps include defining the corporate mission, setting objectives, conducting a marketing audit, and establishing marketing strategies and budgets. Each step is essential for aligning organizational goals with market needs and ensuring effective implementation of marketing initiatives.

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2 views4 pages

Marketing planning process_GP4_ Final

The marketing planning process consists of distinct steps that transition from corporate vision to specific action plans. Key steps include defining the corporate mission, setting objectives, conducting a marketing audit, and establishing marketing strategies and budgets. Each step is essential for aligning organizational goals with market needs and ensuring effective implementation of marketing initiatives.

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ocsler953
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© © All Rights Reserved
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The marketing Planning Process

This process typically follows a number of distinct steps that moves from the general to the
specific, from the overall objectives of the organization down to the individual action plan for a
part of one marketing program.

Step 1 Corporate Vision

Superordinate Goals: Superordinate goals are a cult-like devotion to accomplishing difficult


tasks as if they were a corporate driving principle. For example, battered by the Japanese
competitors in the global competition for dynamic RAM chips in the 1980s, Motorola’s
executives felt humbled and began to get the “quality message.” The company’s chief executive,
George Fisher, said, “The issue was survival; the challenge was quality; the solution would come
from the people of Motorola. We didn’t have a detailed map, but with unity of purpose, we set
out to completely change the way we serve our customers.” If the organization in general, and its
chief executive in particular, has a strong vision of where its future lies, then the organization has
a good chance to achieve a strong position in its markets (and attain that future).

Step 2 Mission Statement


The definition should cover three dimensions: customer groups to be served, customer needs to
be served, and technologies to be utilized. For example, the definition of Intel’s “corporate
mission” in the 1980s and 1990s was to provide computer users around the world (the customer
group) with the state-of-the-art, fastest, and most energy-efficient computing experience (the
customer need) by continual improvement and development of microprocessor technology
(technology). However, the corporate mission may need to be changed accordingly when market
environments change. Microsoft has changed its mission statement, in order to realign with the
changing need of their target market.

This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of marketing planning for managers to master, because it
is largely philosophical and qualitative in nature. Many organizations find their different
departments, and sometimes even different groups in the same department, pulling in different
directions, often with disastrous results, simply because the organization hasn’t defined the
boundaries of the business and the way it wishes to do business.

The following should appear in a mission or purpose statement:


 Role or contribution profit (specify), or service, or opportunity seeker.
 Business definition – define the business, preferably in terms of the benefits you provide
or the needs you satisfy, rather than in terms of what you make.
 Distinctive competences – these are the essential skills/capabilities resources that
underpin what-ever success has been achieved to date. Competence can consist of one
particular item or the possession of a number of skills compared with competitors. If,
however, you could equally well put a competitor’s name to these distinctive
competences, then they are not distinctive competences.
 Indications for the future what the firm will do what the firm might do what the firm will
never do.

Step 3 Setting Corporate Objectives.

What corporate objectives are, and where they fit in the total process. The overall objectives of
commercial organizations are conventionally supposed to be financial, such as maximizing
revenue, maximizing profit, maximizing return on investment, or minimizing cost, choosing
long-term growth (which may be quite different from revenue maximization in the short term).
Because you cannot know the optimum solution with perfect precision, you should choose a
solution that “satisfices” or reaches your corporate objectives satisfactorily.

Step 4 The Marketing Audit


A marketing audit is a systematic appraisal of all the external and internal factors that have
affected a company’s commercial performance over a defined period Given the growing
turbulence of the business environment and the shorter product life cycles that have resulted, no
one would deny the need to stop at least once a year at a particular point in the planning cycle to
try to form a reasoned view of how all the many external and internal factors have
influenced performance. Sometimes, of course, a company will conduct a marketing audit
because it is in financial trouble. At times like these, management often attempts to treat the
wrong symptoms, most frequently by reorganizing the company. But such measures are unlikely
to be effective if there are more fundamental problems which have not been identified. Of
course, if the company survived for long enough, it might eventually solve its problems through
a process of elimination. Essentially, though, the argument is that the problems have first to be
properly defined. The audit is a means of helping to define them.

Two kinds of variable


First, there is the kind over which the company has no direct control, for example economic and
market factors. Second, there are those over which the company has complete control, the
operational variables, which are usually the firm’s internal resources.

This divisions:
External Audit and internal Audit. However, many highly successful companies, as well as using
normal information and control procedures and marketing research throughout the year, start
their planning cycle each year with a formal, audit-type process, of everything that has had an
important influence on marketing activities. Certainly, in many leading consumer goods
companies, the annual self-audit approach is a tried and tested discipline.
Objections to line managers doing their own audits usually centre on the problem of time and
objectivity. In practice, a disciplined approach and thorough training will help. But the discipline
must be applied from the highest to the lowest levels of management if the tunnel
vision that often results from a lack of critical appraisal is to be avoided.

Where relevant, the marketing audit should contain lifecycles for major products and for market
segments, for which the future shape will be predicted using the audit information. Also, major
products and markets should be plotted on some kind of matrix to show their current competitive
position. The next question is: what happens to the results of the audit? The audit is simply a
database, and the task remains of turning it into intelligence, that is, information essential
to decision making

Step 5 Market Overview

This step should spell out clearly: what the market is, how it works, what the key decision-
making points are, what the segments are. Market definition is fundamental to success and must
be made in terms of need sets rather than in product/service terms. IBM almost failed by defining
its market as ‘mainframes’. Accordingly, a pension is a product, not a market, as many other
products can satisfy the same or similar needs. Having done this, a ‘market map’ should be
drawn, which plots the flow of goods or services from supplier through to user, with quantities
through the chain which add up to the market size. In the sense that if five million radiators are
made or imported, five million radiators must be distributed, five million radiators must be
installed and the decision about which radiators are to be installed must be made by someone. A
market segmentation should take place. A segment is a group of customers or consumers that
share the same (or approximately the same) needs.

Step 6 SWOT Analyses

A SWOT should be conducted for each segment that is considered to be important in the
company’s future. These SWOT analyses should, if possible, contain just a few paragraphs of
commentary focusing on key factors only. They should highlight internal differential strengths
and weaknesses vis-à-vis competitors and key external opportunities and threats. A summary of
reasons for good or bad performance should be included. They should be interesting to read,
contain concise statements.

Step 7 Assumptions

It is really a question of standardizing the planning environment. For example, it would be no


good receiving plans from two product managers, one of whom believed the market was going to
increase by 10 per cent, while the other believed the market was going to decline by 10 per cent.
Assumptions should be few in number, and if a plan is possible, irrespective of the assumptions
made, then the assumptions are unnecessary.

Step 8 Marketing Objectives and Strategies

An objective is what you want to achieve. A strategy is how you plan to achieve your objectives.
Thus, there can be objectives and strategies at all levels in marketing. For example, there can be
advertising objectives and strategies, and pricing objectives and strategies.
However, the important point to remember about marketing objectives is that they are about
products and markets only. Common sense will confirm that it is only by selling something to
some-one that the company’s financial goals can be achieved, and that advertising, pricing,
service levels, and so on are the means (or strategies) by which we might succeed in doing this.
Thus, pricing objectives, sales promotion objectives, advertising objectives and the like should
not be confused with marketing objectives.

Marketing objectives are simply about one (or more) of the following:
 Existing products for existing markets
 New products for existing markets
 Existing products for new markets
 New products for new markets.

They should be capable of measurement. Directional terms such as ‘maximize’, ‘minimize’,


‘penetrate’, ‘increase’, etc. are only acceptable if quantitative measurement can be attached to
them. Measurement should be in terms of sales volume; sales value; market share; profit;
percentage penetration of outlets; for example, to have 30per cent of all retail outlets stocking
our product by year 3.

Step 9 Estimate Expected Results and Identify Alternative Plans and Mixes
It is normal at this stage to employ judgement, analogous experience, field tests, and so on, to
test out the feasibility of the objectives and strategies in terms of market share, costs, profits, and
so on. It is also normally at this stage that alternative plans and mixes are considered, if
necessary.

Step 10 The Budget

This normally would be costed out approximately and, if not practicable, alternative strategies
would be proposed and costed out until a satisfactory solution could be reached. This would then
become the budget. In most cases, there would be a budget for the full three years, but there
would also be a very detailed budget for the first year of the plan which would be included in the
one-year operational plan. For example, if sales promotion is a major means of achieving an
objective in a particular market, when sales promotional items appear in the programme, each
one has a specific purpose which can be related back to a major objective. Doing it this way not
only ensures that every item of expenditure is fully accounted for as part of a rational, objective
and task approach, but also that when changes have to be made during the period to which the
plan relates, these changes can be made in such a way that the least damage is caused to the
company’s long-term objectives.

Step 10 First Year Detailed Implementation Programme

In a one-year tactical plan, the general marketing strategies would be developed into specific sub
objectives, each supported by more detailed strategy and action statements.

 A company organized according to functions might have an advertising plan, a sales


promotion plan, a pricing plan, and so on.
 A product-based company might have a product plan, with objectives, strategies and
tactics for price, place and promotion as necessary.
 A market or geographically based company might have a market plan, with objectives,
strategies and tactics for the four Ps as necessary.
 Likewise, a company with a few major customers might have customer plans. Any
combination of the above might be suitable, depending on circumstances.

Reference
https://www.academia.edu. The Marketing Planning Process
Marketing Management (pp.43-90)
DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66916-4_2
August 2021
Authors: Michael Czinkota, Georgetown University

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354112499

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