Strategic Marketing Management
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Chapter 2 : Marketing Strategy and Planning
Deciding How to Compete
Vision
Identifying the Competitive Advantage
Market-Orientation
Components of Market-orientation
Developing Market-orientation
Business Strategy and Marketing
Marketing Situation Analysis
Analyzing Markets and Competitors
Segmenting Markets
Continuous Learning about Markets
Designing Marketing Strategy
Targeting and Positioning Strategy
Implementing a Marketing Strategy
Marketing Planning and Marketing Plans
Strategic Marketing Planning and Tactical Marketing Planning
Marketing Planning
Marketing Plan
Chapter Summary
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The success of a business depends on its vision and objectives. A company
should decide how to compete, in order to face competition in the markets.
The long-term vision of a company determines the how, when, where and where
not to compete in the markets. A business should identify its competitive
advantage and differential competence abilities over its rivals in the
market. There are two different approaches to identify competitive
advantage, namely, customer-oriented analysis and the competitor-oriented
analysis.
Market-orientation is an organizational culture that focuses on the
customers to understand their requirements and provides superior value. The
three main components of market-orientation are customer orientation,
competitor focus, and coordination across functions. There are two
strategies for developing market-orientation namely the planned strategy and
the adjust strategy.
The marketing strategies should be formulated in line with the business
strategy of a company. |
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Some of the barriers to the successful implementation of marketing strategies
are resistance to change by the middle management, flawed outlook by various
persons and departments in the organization, inadequate information flow,
and variance in performance measurement systems.
Marketing planning is a systematic process that involves considering several
organizational factors. Strategic marketing planning refers to planning for
a period of three years or more. Tactical marketing planning is usually for
a period of a year or less. The objectives of marketing planning are to
analyze the requirement of resources, to indicate the expected results, to
focus on the strengths of business, etc. Some of the hurdles in the
marketing planning process are misunderstanding tactics and strategy,
treating marketing as an independent function, etc.
A marketing plan is a written document used to record the output of the
marketing planning process. A marketing plan gives the details of the
activities to be performed and the programs to be undertaken to meet the
marketing objectives. The process of preparing a marketing plan involves
summarizing the strategic situation, describing the target markets, setting
objectives for the target markets, preparing a marketing program positioning
strategy, forecasting sales and allocating budgets, and preparing
contingency plans.
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