NAME: REG NO.

BRENDA CHOGUMAIRA M180835

CHIWAWA MICHAEL M188019
MADANIRE PRECIOUS M187616
NOBUHLE S NGWENYA M185040
MARKETING AND THE CONCEPT OF
PLANNING AND STRATEGY
DEFINITIONS
 MARKETING – is the business process of creating
relationships with and satisfying customers.
 Planning – is the process of deciding when, what, where
and how to do a certain activity before starting to work.
 Strategy – these are the major objectives, purposes or
goals and essential policies and plans for achieving those
goals, stated is such away as to define what business the
company is in or is to be in and the kind of company it is
to be (Subhash, 2001 pp8).
CONCEPT OF STRATEGY
It is concerned with selection of a course of action from
among different alternatives to meet the organisation’s
objectives.
An organisation needs a strategy when:
 The resources are finite

 There is uncertainty about competitive strengths and

behaviour.
 Commitment of resources is irreversible

 There is uncertainty about control of the initiative.

 Strategy provides a unified sense of direction to
which all members of the organisation can relate.
 Where there is no clear concept of strategy
decisions rest on either subjective or intuitive
assessment and are made without regard to other
decisions.
 Such decision become increasingly unreliable as
the pace of change accelerates or decellerates
rapidly.
 Without a strategy an organisation becomes like a
ship without a radar going around in circles.
 Strategy is concerned with a deployment of
potential for results and the development of a
reaction capability to adapt to environmental
changes.
HIERACHIES OF STATEGIES
 CORPORATE STRATEGY – seeks to unify all the
business lines of a company and point them toward an
overall goal.
 Done at executive management level.
 Focuses on defining the manner of competition in a given
industry or product/market segment.
 BUSINESS STRATEGY – usually cover a plan for a
single product or a group of related products
 Nowadays strategic action takes place at the business unit
level.
CONT…
 Where the use of sophisticated tools and
techniques permit the analysis of a business.
 The forecasting of such variables as market
growth, pricing, the impact of government
regulations, the establishment of a plan that can
side step threats in an erratic environment from
competitors, economic circles, social, political
and consumer changes.
 Each functional area of a business e.g marketing
makes its own unique contribution to strategy
formulation at different level.
 The marketing function makes a great deal of contact
with external environment. In such firms marketing
play a pivotal role in strategy development.
 In its strategic role marketing consists of establishing
a match between the firm and its environment.
 It seeks solution to problems of deciding
(a) What business the firm is in and what kinds of business it may enter in the
future
(b) How the chosen fields of endeavour may be successfully run in a
competitive environment by pursuing product, price, promotion, and
distribution perspectives to serve target markets.
(c) In the context of strategy formulation, marketing has two dimensions,
present and future
(d) The present dimension deals with existing relationships of the firm to its
environment.
(e) The future dimension encompasses an intended future relationships in the
form of a set of objectives and the action programs necessary to reach those
objectives.
CONCEPTS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING
 Strategy specifies direction, its intend is to influence the
behaviour of competitors and the evolution of the market to the
advantage of the strategist.
 It seeks to change the competitive environment thus a strategy
statement includes a description of the new competitive
equilibrium to be created, the causer and effect relationships that
will bring it about and the logic to support the course of action.
 Planning articulates the means of implementing strategy.
 A strategic plan specifies a sequence and the timing and steps
that will alter competitive relationships.
 The strategy and the strategic plan are quite different things.
T
 The strategy may be brilliant in content and logic, but
the sequence and timing of the plan inadequate.
 The plan may be the laudable implementation of a
worthless strategy.
 Put together, strategic planning concerns a relationship
of an organisation to its environment.
 Conceptual an organisation monitors its environment,
incorporates the effects of environmental changes into
corporate decision making and formulates new strategies
 A scorecard can be used to evaluate the viability of a company’s strategic
planning effort.
 A strategic planning scorecard contains questions like (a) is our plan

really strategic?
(b) Do our plans leave rooms to explore strategic alternatives

(c) Do we have time and incentives to investigate truly important

things.
(d) Have we ever seriously evaluated a new approach to an old market?

(e) Do our plans critically document examine critical strategies?

(f) Do we consistently make an attempt to examine consumer

competitor distributor responses to our programs.
 Companies that do well in strategic planning define their goals clearly and
develop rational plans to implement them in addition they take the following
steps to make their strategic plan effective:
(1) They shape the company into logical business units that can identify
markets, customers, competitors and external threats the their business.
(2) They demonstrate a willingness at the corporate level to compensate line
managers on long term achievements not just the yearly bottom line, to fund
research programs that could give the unit a long term competitive edge.
(3) They develop at the corporate level the capacity to evaluate and balance
competing requests from business units for corporate funds based on the
degree of risk and reward.
(4) They make shorter term business unit goals to a long terms concept of the
company's evolution over the next 15 to 20 years.
STRATEGIC PLANNING EMERGING PERSPECTIVES

 Many forces affected the way strategic planning developed in the

1970s and early 80s. These forces are:
 Slower growth rate
 Intense global competition
 Automation
 Obsolescence due to technological change, deregulation, and
explosion in information availability, more rapid shifts in raw
materials prices, chaotic money markets, major changes in
micro-economic and socio-political systems so as a result
destabilisation and fluidity have become the norm in world
businesses.
 Today they are many strategic alternatives for all
types of industries.
 Firms are constantly coming up with new ways of
making products and getting them to the markets.
 Comfortable positions in industry after industry e.g in
banking, telecommunications, airlines, automobiles
are disappearing and barrier to entry are much more
difficult to maintain, markets are open and new
competitors are coming from unexpected directions.
 To steadily prosper in such an environment companies need new strategic planning
perspectives
1. First, top management must assume a most explicit role in strategic planning
dedicating a larger amount of time deciding how things ought to be instead of
listening to analysis of how there are.
2. Strategic planning must be an exercise in creativity instead of an exercise in
forecasting.
3. Strategic planning processes and tools that assume that the future would be
similar to the past must be replaced by a mind-set obsessed with being faced to
recognise change and turn it into competitive advantage
4. The role of the planner must change from being a purveyor of incrementalism to
that of a crusade for action.
5. Strategic planning must be restored to the core of line management
responsibilities.
 These perspectives can be described along six action oriented dimensions.
1. Managing a business for competitive advantage

- Organisations in a market economy are concerned with delivering a service or product in a most
profitable way. The key to profitability is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage based on
superior performance relative to the competition.
2 Viewing change as an opportunity

- A new culture should be created within the organisations such that managers look to change as an
opportunity and adapt their business system to continuously emerging condition
3. Managing through people
- Management first task is to create a vision of the organisation.
4. Shaping the strategically managed organisations
- Management should work towards developing an innovative self renewing organisation that the
future will demand.
5. Managing for focus and flexibility.
- Today strategic planning should be viewed differently than it was viewed in the past.
6. Managing fit across all functions.
- Different functions or activities must reinforce
each other for a successful strategy.
EXAMPLE OF MEAD CORPORATION
 It is in the forest production business
 It was ranked 12th in the 15 companies
 the management realised that for it to be the
leading in business its philosophy, management
style and focus had to change.
 The management went back to the drawing table
and came up with a strategic plan with 5 aspects
CONT…

1. corporate goals to be articulated throughout the

company.
2. Management systems restructuring.
3. Seminars for strategic planning concepts and
techniques.
4. Bussiness unit goals to be developed and agreed
5. The board should fund agreed strategies.
CONCLUSION.
 The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Abraham Lincoln