Marketing Planning

Abstract

Corporate planning or strategic company planning comprises the following sequential steps:

• Mission statement (or defining the company mission) has an influence on all planning throughout the organisation, for it is a statement of the company’s overall business philosophy. It is normally a set of guidelines, rather than something that is stated in hard and fast quantitative terms.

• Situational analysis means evaluating external and internal factors that will affect the planning process and asks the question ‘Where are we now?’ This means researching and analysing all information that might have a bearing on the organisation and its operations, from internal factors like individual departmental company resources, to external factors like current political events that might impinge on the activities of the company.

• Set organisational objectives requires company management to put forward guidance as to how the company should fulfil its mission and this clarifies where the company wants to be. These, unlike the mission statement, should be expressed in achievable quantitative terms.

• Choose strategies to achieve these objectives which are the concrete ideas that set about achieving company objectives and they relate to how the mission will be accomplished.