The Role of Marketing in the Strategic Planning Process

Marketing plays an important role in the strategic planning process for many organizations. Although some marketing positions are represented at the corporate level, most are at the functional level within the business units of an organization. Marketing is involved in strategic planning at all organizational levels.

Strategic marketing describes marketing activities that affect corporate, business, and marketing strategic plans. Strategic marketing activities can be classified into three basic functions. First, marketers help orient everyone in the organization toward markets and customers. Thus, they are responsible for helping organizations execute a marketing philosophy throughout the strategic planning process.

Second, marketers help gather and analyze information required to examine the current situation, identify trends in the marketing environment, and assess the potential impact on these trends. This information and analysis provides input for corporate, business, and marketing strategic plans.

Third, marketers are involved in the development of corporate, business, and marketing strategic plans. Marketing’s influence varies across organizations. For organizations driven by a marketing philosophy, marketing necessarily plays a key role in strategic decision making. The trend toward pushing strategic planning responsibility further down the organization is increasing marketing’s clout in an organization’s strategic planning process.

Marketing management relates to specific product marketing strategies. It differs from strategic marketing in its basic orientations. Strategic marketing focuses on broad strategic decisions at the corporate and business levels. Marketing management is concerned, by contrast, with specific strategic decisions for individual products and the day-to-day activities needed to execute these strategies successfully. At the operating level, marketing managers must focus on the four P’s of the marketing mix: price, product, promotion, and place (distribution).

The strategic role of marketing and marketing management is now in a period of considerable change and evolution. These changes are due to a number of important environmental phenomena that are affecting the way many firms do business. To begin, many well-known companies work closely with dedicated partners on the supply side (often using single supply partners) and the distributor side of their business, expecting their distributors to play proactive roles in the development of services and marketing strategy. For example, on the supply side, the modern-day Nike does very little manufacturing of its own and focuses largely on marketing. In this vein, companies such as this are actually embedded in business networks, comprising strategic alliances among suppliers, distributors, and the marketing firm.

Other influences on marketing include the connected-knowledge economy; globalized and consolidated industries; fragmented markets; and demanding customers and consumers. With these changes, new kinds of competitors will emerge, markets will continue to become homogenized across the country boundaries, and mass markets will erode in the face of mass customization. Business customers and individual consumers expect diversity and have multiple means of obtaining products, as well as learning about company offerings. Some observers foresee a future in which the Web will enable automated purchasing, anonymous transactions, and the by-passing of most intermediaries.

The role of marketing within the firm is in transition as well. For example, some scholarly observers have argued that the marketing function will be reduced as the values embodied in the firm’s market orientation permeate the firm. That is, a cross-functional dispersion of marketing activities will occur as the firm becomes market-oriented throughout. In a test of this premise, one study of managers across functions (i.e., marketing, human relations, operations, accounting, and finance) within their firms related that marketing as a separate function still contributes to a firm’s financial performance, customer-relationship performance, and new-product performance beyond the performance attributable to the firm’s general market orientation. Therefore, an understanding of the strategic planning process is even more important in today’s ever-changing marketplace.

Comprehension questions:

1. What role does marketing play in the strategic planning process?

2. What does strategic marketing describe?

3. What does marketing management relate to?

4. What do other influences on marketing include?

5. What is the role of marketing within a firm?