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2.4.1 Planning

In essence, planning helps us to decide what to do about the future. Yet many marketing managers still do not use formal plans. The common cry is that 'I am too busy to plan' or 'we're doing all right without formal plans so it can't be too important'.

The value in planning is the process of studying your environment, analysing what is going on, and deciding what actions you are going to take ¾ even if later circumstances mean you change the actions from those originally intended. If the latter does occur, you are in a position to understand what the change is and the implications of making that change because you have previously gone through the planning process.

The next reading addresses the importance of strategic planning and explains the hierarchy of strategy from corporate strategy strategies to functional strategies. Note that the reading discusses selecting target markets an issue that will be dealt with in depth later in this unit.

In your text

Kotler et al. (2004) Chapter 3, pp. 74-83, 'Strategic planning and marketing', 'Strategic planning', pp. 102-109, 'Planning functional strategies' and 'The marketing process'.

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