ASSIGNMENT 3

Assignment 3

Assignment 3

Introduction

"Marketing is the delivery of customer satisfaction at a profit. The goal of marketing is to attract new customers by promising superior value, and to keep current customers by delivering satisfaction."(P.Kotler, Principles of marketing, 2nd ed, 1999, pg xvi.)

Marketing Planning that Contribute to the Success of the Planning Process

It's for this reason marketing planning is considered important by many theorists. As suggested by MacDonald Marketing planning, and its principle focus, is all about identifying and developing a competitive advantage in the market. Marketing planning is simply a series of events leading toward the setting of marketing objectives and plans to reach the objectives set (Macdonald 1984). It's at this stage that things such as the company's mission and vision will be identified. Strategies employed to achieve these will be a key element towards the planning process.

Mintzberg puts forward a valid point when he points out 'When companies understand the difference between planning and strategic thinking they can get back to what the strategy-making process should be: capturing what the manager learns from all sources (both the soft insights from his or her personal experiences and the experience of others throughout the organization and the hard data from market research and the like) and then synthesizing that learning into a vision of the direction that the business should pursue' (Mintzberg Harvard Business review page 107). It's with this statement that it's made clear that one key element is not only relying on planners for strategies. The company should be a little more versatile and let those involved in carrying the strategies also play a part in or contribute toward a plan/ strategy to achieve the desired outcome.

As outlined by Macdonald many texts describe marketing planning to be the construction process of audits, SWOT analyses and goals. This shows that they are key elements of marketing planning. However he brings it to peoples attention that this is done without thinking of other factors, such as ' who is to do all these things, how, when, how often, should it be top down or bottom up, which comes first, the one year plan or the long range plan, and so on?' (McDonald, M 1989 "Ten Barriers To Marketing Planning" page 4). With this statement it's evident that it is the construction of these planning tools that are the key elements of marketing planning however for them to be effective in the planning process and go toward achieving a company's vision there must be a detailed strategy in place.

The S.W.O.T analysis model is useful and important as marketing planning activity; it helps to produce realistic and meaningful ideas and helps to identify what the company needs to do to answer the question put forward by McDonald (Above). The model rates the products strengths and weaknesses against competition, and shows the outstanding opportunities and threats. "Successful companies make greater use of basic strategic tools such as S.W.O.T and the product life cycle analysis" (R W. Brooks bank, European journal of marketing, 1991, page ...