Strategic Planning, Implementation
and Control
The aim of strategic planning is to shape the company’s
businesses and products to yield the targeted profits and
growth
Strategic planning takes place at four levels:
-corporate,
-division,
-business unit,
-product
The marketing process consists of four
steps:
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analyzing market opportunities,
developing marketing strategies,
planning marketing programs,
managing marketing effort.
The Strategic Planning, Implementation, and
Control Process
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Market-oriented strategic planning is the managerial process of
developing and maintaining a viable fit among the
organization’s
objectives,
skills,
resources
its changing market opportunities.
For instance Nestle, the world's largest
 the world's largest food manufacturer, develops
an overall strategic plan at its headquarters in
Vevey,Switzerland.
Below that, each strategic group, such as
confectionery, develops subordinate strategic plans.
These feed into the strategic plan's national
operations.
At each level, marketing and other functional plans
will exist. At the final
level, brand plans cover the marketing of brands such
as Kit Kat, Lion.
The strategic plan contains several
components:
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the mission,
the strategic objectives,
the strategic audit,
SWOT analysis,
portfolio analysis,
objectives and strategies.
All of these feed from and feed into marketing plans.
The Mission
A mission states the purpose of a company. Firms
often start with a clear mission held within the mind
of their founder.
Then, over time, the mission fades as the company
acquires new products and markets.
The mission statement of Motorola, for
example
“to honorably serve the needs of the community by
providing products and services of superior quality at
a fair price to our customers; to do this so as to earn
an adequate profit which is required for the total
enterprise to grow; and by so doing provide the
opportunity for our employees and shareholders to
achieve their reasonable personal objectives.”
SWOT Analysis
 SWOT analysis draws the critical strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) from
the strategic audit. The audit contains a wealth of
data of differing importance and reliability. SWOT
analysis distils these data to show the critical items
from the internal and external audit.
Opportunities and Threats
 Opportunities:
• Economic climate
• Demographic changes
• Market
• Technology
 Threats
• Competitive activity
• Channel pressure
• Demographic changes
• Politics
A major pet food manufacturer could pitch the following strengths and
weaknesses against the opportunities and threats
 Strengths:
• Market leader in the dry eat food
market.
• Access to the group's leading world
position in food technology.
• Market leader in luxury pet foods.
• The group's excellent worldwide
grocery distribution.
• Pet food market leader in several big
markets, including France, Italy,
Spain and South America.
 Weakn esses:
• Number three in the wet pet food
market.
• Excessive product range with several
low-volume brands.
• Most brand names are little known,
and are cluttered following
acquisitions.
• Relatively low advertising and
promotions budget.
• Product range needs many
manufacturing skills.
• Poor store presence in several large
markets: Germany, UK, USA and
Canada.
• Overall poor profits performance.
According to Peter Drucker, it is time to ask some
fundamental questions to determine objectives
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What is our business?
Who is the customer?
What is of value to the customer?
What will our business be?
What should our business be?
Successful companies continuously raise these questions
and answer them thoughtfully and thoroughly.
The Business Strategic-Planning Process
Goal Formulation
The company has performed a SWOT analysis of the
internal and external environments, it can proceed to
develop specific goals for the planning period in a
process called goal formulation.
To be effective, goals must
(1)
be arranged hierarchically to guide the businesses in moving from broad
to specific objectives for departments and individuals;
(2) (2) be stated quantitatively whenever possible;
(3) (3) be realistic;
(4) (4) be consistent.
Strategy Formulation
Goals indicate what a business unit wants to achieve; strategy describes the
game plan
for achieving those goals.
 Michael Porter has condensed them into three
generic types that provide a good starting point for
strategic thinking:
 overall cost leadership,
 differentiation,
 focus.
 Overall cost leadership: Here the
business works to achieve the
lowest production and distribution
costs so that it can price lower than
competitors and win more market
share
 Differentiation: Here the business
concentrates on achieving superior
performance in an important customer
benefit area, such as being the leader in
service, quality,style, or technology—
but not leading in all of these things.
 Focus: Here the business focuses on one or more
narrow market segments, getting to know these
segments intimately and pursuing either cost
leadership or differentiation within the target
segment.
 Program Formulation
Once the business unit has developed its principal
strategies, it must work out detailed supporting programs.
 Implementation
Implementation is vital to effective management of the
marketing process.
 Feedback and Control
As it implements its strategy, the firm needs to track
the results and monitor new developments in the
internal and external environments.
The control process