Free «Applied Strategic Planning» Essay

For many businesses, marketing planning is a rational way of translating experience, research information, and thought into marketing action. It is a pragmatic, organized procedure for analyzing situations and meeting the future. Based on information about ends and means to determine various causal relationships, trends, and patterns of behavior, it is concerned with the selection of alternative strategies. Still, in some cases, when a plan is too stringent it can hinder the growth and development opportunities. The main industries affected by this problem are industries and companies involved in research hand development activities, namely IT industries, pharmaceutical industries, electronics, etc. In essence, purposeful research, experience, judgment, and decision making (all of which are directed toward guiding the corporate system and bringing it growth, survival, and adjustment) form the fabric of the marketing planning process (Goodstein et al 2001).

Strict planning and lack of flexibility in plans can lead to failure. For instance, the example of Kodak and its photo products shows that inability to change strategic perspectives and long-term planning resulted in decline of the company and market position. Marketing planning should be seen as an integrated, intelligent, rational process for guiding business change. Marketing planning is closely related to problem solving. Planning constitutes an intentional, unified approach to the solution of various marketing problems. Although the specification of a plan for solving a problem is the first step, execution must accompany planning to achieve results. Marketing planning is neither automatic nor impersonal. Planning should be flexible in order to respond to innovations and new environmental threats affected an industry (Goodstein et al 2001). The use of end-means analysis for planning purposes requires that the values concerning the ends themselves be clearly specified. Some of them will refer to marketing goals, others to goals dealing with the maintenance of the business system itself. planning is dynamic by necessity. Flexible and pliable plans that reflect unexpected and unanticipated reactions must be developed. Because it encompasses market and sales forecasts, company plans and programs, and, of course, budgets, marketing planning carries out the marketing concept by balancing the firm's capability with expected opportunities.