MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Marketing Management

Marketing Management

Introduction

Doyle (2002) explains strategic marketing plan is concerned with adapting the organisation to a changing environment more effectively than their competitors. "Organisation succeeds when they meet the needs of customers more effectively than their competitors" (Doyle 2002, p. 92). The market's drivers for change (Drummond, Ensor 2003), some of which are far beyond the organisation's sphere of control. Adaptability becomes an inextricable phenomenon in mainstream marketing environment. Doyle advanced that a well defined strategy would incorporate the following: Scope of business; Objectives; Strategic business unit (SBU) identification; Resource allocation; Deeping sustainable advantage; Effective functional strategies (positioning, product line, price, promotion and distribution; synergy. The elements of synergy and SBU identification underlined by Doyle prove relevant to large organisations with diverse business units, products and target segments. It would serve a right purpose for management to be clear and exact about their choice of product, what business are they in, and what business do they want to be. He supports his approach with the following diagram.

Discussion

The leverage in the market place is what Drummond and Ensor underline on their approach in the strategic marketing planning process as it: Involves achieving a superior competitive position within a defined market. Essentially, it involves segmentation, targeting and positioning. This must address customers, competitors and internal corporate factors (2003, p. 14).

Drummond as well as Ensor stress a strategic marketing plan should be relevant and sustainable (2003); an argument also adhered to and phrased by Doyle (2002) as sustainable differential advantage. In order for that to happen, the organisation must be competitive now and in the future and be able to accept 'change' as an integral part of strategy (Drummond and Ensor 2003).

Dibb et al posits the strategic marketing process is based on the establishment of organisational goals and must stay within the bounds of organisational opportunities and resources (2001, p. 656). They highlight a complex set of externalities including; political, legal, regulatory, societal and green, economic as well as competitive, and technological forces that border around the all popular notion of PEST (political, economic, social & technological) analysis.

The relationship between market opportunities and organisation's goals and the availability of resources to match them in relation external forces is captured below in the diagram provided by Dibb et al (2001).

Hiebaun (1997) underlines the fact that the strategy marketing plan demands a methodology to be followed and should begin with the company's forecast and objectives . According to him, forecast consists in answering the following question:

If our market and environment tendency stays the same and continues, what will be our situation in the short, medium, and long term?

We have to ask ourselves:

Where is the company at right now?

Where are we going?

Where do we want to go?

However, McDonalds (2003) cautions about the using of the forecasting system as they tend to project a current business into the future, which can work if the future is going to be the same as the present or the past; if not the business would result to lost opportunities ...