The need for strategic planning is currently evident in the marketing activity of any modern organization. Planning offers the possibility for economic agents to optimize their activity on multiple levels.
A whole series of substantial changes in their marketing environment such as: information explosion, technological developments in the field of transport and telecommunications and last but not least the evolution of the profile of postmodern consumers have created the necessary premises for most companies to consider marketing planning a priority. .
The accelerated dynamics of the marketing environment corroborated with the increasing difficulties related to forecasting its evolution give rise to situations in which the management of companies fails to successfully integrate the material, financial, human and informational resources available in a time horizon. given for the fulfillment of some strategic objectives. Very often, this impossibility is reduced to the inability to coherently plan the marketing activity.
Regardless of the size of the organization, the nature or complexity of the activity, to ensure economic and social efficiency, each economic agent needs the ability to determine realistic objectives, strategies adapted to the context and a planning of activities, responsibilities and budgets. .
In this context, an approach that presents the main coordinates of marketing planning, starting from the structure and basic components of the marketing plan is welcome, especially since this very complex issue is addressed only in a few papers. specialized in scientific literature from our country.
Thus, the decision makers within the companies, the marketing managers as well as all those interested in this field, will find in the pages of the paper explicit concepts and notions regarding the marketing plan, analysis of the marketing environment, ways to set objectives, substantiation of marketing strategies. marketing and identifying the activities necessary for their implementation.
The paper proves a certain scientific value, both by the approach and by the quality of the information presented, specific for an approach based on a rich specialized literature, coherence and clarity of the ideas presented. The author manages to present in a synthetic and selective manner the complex problem of planning within the marketing activity, seen through the elaboration and implementation of the marketing plan - a basic tool for the strategic approach of any organization.
Judiciously structured on 8 chapters, the paper presents successively, all the elements necessary to understand the process of substantiation and implementation of the marketing plan.
At the beginning of the book the reader is familiar with a series of notions and basic concepts regarding strategic marketing planning, the context in which this approach is initiated and developed within organizations, ways to optimize decisions specific to marketing. There is also a clear and concise presentation of the role that the marketing plan has in the context of the planning process, as well as the explanation of its content from the perspective of its implementation in the activity of economic agents.
Next, during the other chapters, the marketing plan is explicitly treated starting with the first stage regarding the issue of defining the mission of organizations and its correlation with corporate objectives and ending with the ways in which the marketing plan can be integrated into the business philosophy of various organizations.
The methods of analyzing the portfolio of activities, the analysis of the marketing environment are approached and in this context the SWOT analysis is widely presented, seen as a way of integrating the information regarding the internal and external environment of the organizations.
Particular attention is paid to the concept of marketing program, as well as to the clarification of the relationships between it and the marketing plan, an important element in the book economy because over time there have been confusions and inappropriate interpretations from the unconditional taking of terms specialized abroad.
The control of the implementation of the marketing plan is also a subject that finds in the pages of the book a distinct place along with the other specific steps for substantiating the plan. In the marketing plan economy, the control and evaluation of results are activities that permanently accompany the planning activity, offering decision makers the necessary support to optimize the degree to which marketing objectives are achieved or are readjusted in accordance with environmental dynamics.
The end of the paper brings a plus originality and value of the whole approach by presenting a synthetic model related to a marketing plan for a hypothetical company, the readers being able to get acquainted with the concrete way of applying the concepts described during the paper in an explicit form.
Through the approached theme, the clarity of the concepts and the information presented, the paper represents a real help for the marketing specialists especially interested in the concrete way in which the planning of the marketing activity must be done at the level of various organizations. The paper also addresses a wider circle of readers consisting of students, masters, doctoral students, university teachers, researchers and practitioners in economics interested in the practical ways in which marketing is generally implemented in the current context of business environment characterized by uncertainty and dynamism.
Through the advanced ideas and the approach, the author contributes to the treatment from the specific position of a valuable university teacher of an extremely interesting and defining field of marketing application for the strategic values ​​it has in the context of economic activity, offering a complement. welcome to the specialized literature in our country.
Prof. univ. emeritus Dr. Dr. h.c. Iacob Catoiu
Faculty of Marketing - ASE Bucharest