Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Marketing Planning’ for class 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Marketing Planning’ especially written for school and college students.
Essay on Marketing Planning
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Meaning of Marketing Planning
- Essay on the Nature of Marketing Planning
- Essay on the Scope of Marketing Planning
- Essay on the Objectives of Marketing Planning
- Essay on the Need and Importance of Marketing Planning
- Essay on the Steps in Marketing Planning Process
Essay # 1. Meaning of Marketing Planning:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
“Marketing planning is the work of setting up of objectives for marketing activity and of determining and scheduling the steps necessary to achieve objectives” (American Marketing Association).
Marketing planning is concerned with the determination of marketing objectives and with the development of the means (i.e. the marketing operational parameters and operating functions) to achieve such objectives. These objectives may be of short-term and long-term nature.
So, the planning for marketing may encompass both the short-range as well as long-range. In general, capital-intensive industries such as generation of power, or iron and steel resources are committed for many years, sometimes 15 to 20 years, and it becomes necessary for the companies to determine whether their products will have relevance aver the whole period of the commitment of resources.
In case of a fashion industry producing women’s dresses, the resource commitment may be for year or so.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The activities are needed to be adjusted in the light of consumer tastes and preferences. The business firms providing such items need hot make any long-term commitment. In other words, the marketing planning involves the commitment of the resources and the design of programmes for the period ahead that can be clearly looked into, and has nothing to do with the term or range.
Essay # 2. Nature of Marketing Planning:
Marketing planning is the systematic development of market-oriented action programmes aimed at reaching agreed business objectives by a process of analysing, evaluating, and selecting from among the opportunities which are foreseen, after a careful scrutiny of external environmental opportunities and threats and an appraisal of internal corporate strengths and weaknesses.
Marketing planning is the process of formulating marketing objectives as well as developing and evaluating alternative courses of action to reach these marketing objectives on the basis of SWOT (strengths/weaknesses of a firm, and opportunities/threats posed by environment outside a firm) analysis.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
When we say “planning is the design of a desired future and of effective ways of bringing it about”, we recognise that there is a need to ‘out- plan’ rather than ‘outguess’ future business uncertainties. Marketing planning, thus, is not simply a system for solving problems, but — mare importantly — a system that leads to the discovery of untapped opportunities.
The object of marketing planning, therefore, extends to identifying new areas of investment and markets. How the marketing management initiates new projects, new products, new and improved uses of existing products, new courses of action (viz. price, quality, delivery, customer service, etc.) and hew it analyses past experience are the subject of marketing planning.
Marketing planning, when systematically approached, implies two key elements:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(a) The imposition of a planning discipline on the present marketing operations of the business – that is, the establishment of a marketing planning system for each division (product-wise or market-wise) of an enterprise and the maintenance of this system; and
(b) A reappraisal of the business and its markets, and of the directions in which these should be heading.
The essence of marketing planning, thus, lies in the application of the company’s resources and talents to meet profitable uses. Innovation is the core of such planning for a change. It is the critical element in the entire process of marketing which enables the management (including marketing set up) to accomplish the marketing goals and objectives.
The changes in the economic, social, technological and political environment have a profound impact upon a business firm basically a micro- unit which makes it necessary to undertake formal long-range planning at the company’ level.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
This impact logically puts a pressure on the marketing management to achieve short-term marketing targets at the expense of the long-term prosperity of the company.
In this perspective, marketing planning is an attempt to ensure that managers are continually measuring their performance against the company’s long-term profit and market objectives, evaluating alternative methods of reaching these goals, and keeping in touch with rapid changes in the market and in technology.
To sun up, the marketing planning has the following characteristic features:
(i) Marketing planning is a formal and systematic approach towards planning of all marketing activities—product positioning, price setting, distribution channels, etc.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(ii) Marketing planning, as a rational activity, requires thinking, imagination and foresight. Market analysis, market projection, consumer behaviour analysis, and marketing-guided conclusions are based on data and measurements drawn from internal and external environments.
(iii) Marketing planning is a forward-locking and dynamic process designed to promote market-oriented or consumer-oriented business actions.
(iv) Planning is concerned with two things:
(a) Avoiding incorrect actions and
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(b) Reducing frequency of failure to exploit opportunities.
Thus, marketing planning has both an optimistic and a pessimistic component.
(v) Planning is a process of deciding in advance what to do and how to do it. If the marketing planner desires to achieve a target market at some future date and if he needs some time to decide, what to do and how to do it, he must make the necessary marketing decisions before taking action.
(vi) Planning is basically a decision-making process. Marketing planning is a programme of marketing-based actions regarding the future with the object of minimising risk and uncertainty and producing a set of interrelated decisions.
For example, in planning a new product positioning, a series of decisions on purchase, sale, product development, advertisement, sales promotion, after-sale-service, etc. will affect the marketing programme of existing products and thus performance of the company as a whole.
(vii) Marketing planning is done by the marketing department. Various sub-divisions and sections under the department submit their proposals based on which the overall company marketing plans are developed and designed.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Essay # 3. Scope of Marketing Planning:
The planning for marketing is an extension of sales forecasting beyond the point where the future course of events has already been predetermined by past or present decisions. It implies a thorough examination of the business enterprise and the whole environment in greater depth.
Sales forecasting is short-term in nature, say one or two years at best. So its scope is narrow. But marketing planning has to look further ahead, a medium-term view of about five years ahead and a long-term view of about a decade or more.
Marketing planning is a system like any other system comprising inputs, transformation processes and outputs.
So, the scope of planning for marketing can be explained by a logistics below:
The scope of marketing planning extends far beyond products and markets.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The areas within an enterprise in which marketing planning may have a useful place include the following:
1. Product Policy Issues:
In a multi-product firm, there is a requirement to phase on in an orderly sequence when the gestation period for new products grows longer and longer while the actual market life of the product becomes shorter and shorter.
2. Industry Supply and Demand Issues:
A correct appraisal and analysis on these issues- cover aspects like:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(a) Market and consumer characteristics which determine the factors affecting demand for the products of a business and its growth prospect;
(b) Cost and investment characteristics which strongly affect industry supply;
(c) Technology which affects the degree to which the supply of a product is flexible and the extent to which the new products can be made with the same resources; and
(d) The structure of the industry which determines the extent and nature of competition in that industry, for example, degree of concentration in the industry, barriers to entry into the industry and so on.
3. Competitive Analysis and Strategy Formation:
These are concerned with the way in which a firm can compete more effectively to strengthen its market position.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The marketing planner should identify and understand the determinants of competition like:
(i) Rivalry among existing firms,
(ii) Threat of new entrants,
(iii) Bargaining power of buyers,
(iv) Bargaining power of suppliers and
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(v) threats of substitute products or services.
4. Market Share Analysis:
Although general economic conditions of a country as well as industry defend are important while determining the scope of marketing planning, most company decision-makers like to know what is the demand for the particular product produced by the company.
In most cases, the product must be priced in competition with other products, and the share of the market is determined by the merits, the product, and the marketing set up of the company.
In determining the present and long-term demand for a company’s products, the method of market share analysis comes to play a great role. A significant advantage of market share analysis is that it requires an explicit evaluation of competition and of company’s policies and market plans in terms of effects of these variables on a firm’s position in the industry.
Market share analysis becomes highly effective when the trends are reasonably predictable and competition is centered on market, share. However, in some industries like fashion garments, market shares are very unstable. Any attempt to project a market share based on historical data is likely to be misleading both in the short run and in the long run.
It may be pertinent to note that share of market is a measure that is most meaningful if industry can be precisely defined in terms of directly substitutable, non-differentiated products. In practice, the measures of market share can only be approximations of market positions.
5. National Planning Issues:
There is a close relation between national planning and enterprise’s marketing planning. For example, if the Government reduces the tax rate, the propensity of consumers to spend more on durable goods is likely to increase. And most companies selling TV sets, refrigerators, and cars will be optimistic about their sales.
On the other hand, if the Government raises the prices of petroleum to acquire more resources, the demand for cars will fall. The marketing planning has to understand the implications of these conflicting national policies for determining its scope of marketing plans.
6. Communication for Performs:
With the design of a formal marketing planning system, the second-level marketing managers and executives get guidelines in the preparation of their strategic plans. The second- level executives are interested to know two things: what are the goals of planning and what is their role in achieving the goals.
The right answer will differ from company to company. The marketing planning system provides the scope to determine how goals should be communicated and how specific these should be in actual practice.
7. Linkage with Budgeting:
There is a close link between planning and budgeting for marketing. For example, a division’s sales forecast prepared in’ the first planning cycle may subsequently became the sales commitment for the next year’s marketing operations budget.
8. Marketing Situations Analysis:
The nature of marketing plans is largely determined by the nature of situations or circumstances in which a company operates. Therefore, a careful analysis of a company’s specific situation is a prerequisite of normal marketing strategy planning.
The relevant issues to be considered are: assessment of past and present marketing strategies, marketing organisation structure, styles of key-line marketing managers, and the need to integrate the marketing planning activity with the existing management systems in the company.
9. Contingency Planning and Situational Design:
The marketing planning system requires a knowledge of the future—which may be certain, uncertain and unknown. With respect to the aspects of the future which are certain, a commitment planning for marketing can be adopted with provisions for appropriate controls to avoid any mistakes.
When sate aspects of the future are uncertain, a contingency planning is required and the marketing management should prepare a plan for each eventuality so that it can quickly exploit the opportunities. A contingency plan for marketing is a part of its formal strategy plan whose basic purpose is to achieve a high state of readiness to counteract contingencies and reduce risks.
Since most business decisions are taken under highly uncertain conditions, a contingency planning for marketing farces the management to identify and evaluate critical assumptions, to remain alert during execution of strategy and to respond swiftly to contingencies, thus reducing surprises and risks.
4. Essay on the Objectives of Marketing Planning:
The ultimate purpose of a business firm is the improvement of the profits and the return on investment over time by its development as an effective and lasting organisation within itself, its field of competition and the community and nation of which it is a part.
More specifically, a planning for marketing is designed:-
1. To ensure that the corporate as well as the marketing objectives and strategy are appraised regularly and systematically;
2. To aid the top management in general and the marketing function in particular through a careful analysis and consideration of alternative courses of action so as to identify new opportunities for profitable investment;
3. To ensure that a systematic evaluation is made of the projects; and
4. To develop an organisational process that co-ordinates and controls the future activities of different units in large and diversified organisations.
We can, therefore, identify four broad objectives of marketing planning as follows:-
1. Allocation of scarce resources like funds, managerial talent and technological know-how among product/market alternatives (e.g. product market expansion, product or market acquisition, product or market diversification, etc.) which determine the strategic direction of the firm.
2. Assisting the firm to adapt to environmental opportunities and threats that help to improve the business by providing a strategic fit with the environment. This outward locking search helps to identify strategic marketing options and to employ resources in such a way that they yield the best return.
3. Coordinating the marketing strategic activities so as to reflect the firm’s own internal strengths and weaknesses in order to achieve efficient marketing operations. Such integration provides a direction for building up the firm’s strengths and avoiding its weaknesses.
Integration can take several farms, e.g. development of strategic marketing programmes to achieve particular marketing objectives. Adaptation and integration purposes are complementary to each other. Adaptation implies a focus on what the firm intends to achieve, whereas integration focuses on how to achieve in the most efficient manner.
4. Introducing a systematic approach of organisation development and management development through learning from the outcomes of the past strategic marketing decisions. Planning is a vehicle for more effective managerial laming so that the executive team of a company can systematically increase its strategic decision-making capabilities over time.
A properly designed and executed planning system for marketing contributes to organisation-cum-management development in ways:
(i) The process of discussing, developing, and executing marketing plans serves as a valuable learning experience; and
(ii) The process of performance monitoring and organisational motivation imposes a self-improvement system to achieve the targets and goals.
Essay # 5. Need and Importance of Marketing Planning:
1. It is to be emphasised that properly conducted advance planning for marketing can be of real assistance to the top management in general and to the marketing management in particular in their determination of marketing objectives and policies and in the marketing-guided decision-making through which the enterprise seeks to implement those objectives and policies.
2. The basic task of planning for marketing is to visualise the business as it could be for five or ten years from now. To this end, the business is extrapolated into successive states in future time in accordance with its past, present, and desired development. From this projective analysis, current marketing objectives are formulated and adopted, and a series of marketing-guided actions are undertaken to achieve them.
3. An organised marketing plan, at its best, provides for as much flexibility as practicable but at the same time establishes a direction of marketing effort and a programme of specific marketing operations which increase the achievement of the business over time through a range of necessary or desirable modifications.
4. A marketing plan, at its least, reduces the adverse consequences of unfavourable circumstances beyond the influence of the management.
5. An advance planning for marketing provides criteria for basic marketing decisions for both short-term and long-term periods.
6. A marketing planning is a kind of projective analysis. This projective exercise is repeated periodically and the marketing objectives and plans are modified as required.
Certain key factors such as sales per employee, sales per branch or depot, own sales to industry sales, domestic sales vs. overseas sales, marketing and selling costs to total costs, zone or area-wise sales comparison, market sector-wise growth, consumer habits, competition, etc. inside and outside the business organisation can be observed and analysed for readjustment in the plan provisions.
7. A marketing plan promotes a comprehensive view of the business firm and acts as a process of communication and co-ordination between the marketing division or department and other functional divisions or departments. For example, when the marketing department plans for introducing a new product by a target date, the finance department can ensure availability of adequate funds at the appropriate time.
The personnel department can arrange for new recruits. The production department will provide the stock well in advance. In other words, the marketing planning parameters and schedules enable the management to take calculated business risks and to think ahead.
8. A well-knit marketing plan avoids any hasty judgement and adhocism, appreciates logical outcome of a course of action, enforces a deliberate pattern of discipline, and provides a new way of controlling the business.
Foresight and anticipatory action generated through a marketing plan enables the business firm to manipulate future trends for its advantage. The plan states what will be done and the level of achievement can at any time be compared with the plan for rational control action.
Essay # 6. Steps in Marketing Planning Process:
In a corporate set up, two levels of planning are in practice:
(1) Comprehensive or overall company planning, and
(2) Specific operating planning.
The overall company planning is formulated having focus on the planning of strategic issues and implementation schemes.
Both of than interact each other. While the strategic company planning includes the development of overall planning premises, objectives and policies; the implementation stage of planning concentrates on the co-ordination and summary of the individual operating and staff plans required to develop overall plans and budgets for the company.
The marketing planning is, thus, a specific operating planning document and requires the development of detailed marketing plans as well as derivative marketing policies and procures like other functional plans on finance, production, R&D, etc.
The following eight steps should normally be followed in the marketing planning process:
1. Planning and organising the marketing planning effort.
This step requires:
(i) Defining specifically what the marketing planning effort is expected to achieve, and to what use the marketing plans will be put;
(ii) Developing an approach to carrying out the marketing planning function (including policies that will guide the planning effort); and
(iii) Determining a time-table for developing the marketing plans.
2. Defining the marketing planning premises.
This step involves:
(i) Determining the key marketing factors (e.g. quality, price, customer, place, etc.) which will have a major influence on planning through a study of environmental factors (such as society, economy, government policy, industry, market) related to the market plan being developed as well as the company resources, operations and profitability; and
(ii) Developing the bases upon which specific marketing plans are to be built, wherever possible assumptions about the future should be quantified and given in tire form of forecasts.
3. Determining the company objective.
In the light of the marketing planning premises, this step involves:
(i) Developing and evaluating alternative directions that the company might follow;
(ii) Selecting the marketing objectives that will most profitably exploit the opportunities identified during the premising stage of planning; and
(iii) In addition, stating the marketing-guided principles of action, general philosophy, and overall strategy that will guide and control all phases of marketing planning.
4. Developing marketing policies or guidelines for action. After developing and evaluating alternatives that will achieve the marketing objectives, this step selects the marketing policies that best fulfill the company objective and still meet the market, the industry and other allied criteria.
5. Developing implementation plans for marketing. After developing and evaluating alternatives, this step involves:
(i) Selecting the marketing plan (including subsidiary objectives for all other functional areas) that is consistent and attainable;
(ii) Quantifying the marketing plan in clear terms (the sales forecast plays a dominant role at this stage); and
(iii) Specifying the needed derivative policies, and procedures in the planning areas.
6. Coordinating and controlling the marketing planning. After the marketing plans for implementation are completed, these are reviewed and co-ordinated in the form of budgets. At this stage, management information systems and other scientific decision-making tools are extensively used for control purposes.
7. Marketing organisation planning. At this stage, a suitable marketing organisation is developed, and administrative procedures to implement the marketing plan are established.
8. Reviewing the marketing plan. The marketing plan is subjected to review and refinement periodically by means of SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/ opportunities/threats) analysis.
The marketing manager must bear in mind that his operating plans are an integral part of the overall company planning process and affected by the environmental and resource limitations and that his policies in large part are dictated by overall company directions.
A model chart of ‘marketing planning process shows a detailed current marketing plan with emphasis on sales planning details. The same can be developed for other plans concerning the production, product, channels of distribution and so on. All, of course, in some degree, need to be integrated.