Marketing Plans, 8th Edition

Preface and acknowledgements

Please read this as it contains important information about this book.

The importance of marketing planning is demonstrated by the half million copies of this book that have been sold in English and many other languages since it was first published in 1984.

Since the book's launch, it has helped and encouraged hundreds of thousands of practising managers with the difficult task of marketing planning. Many of them have been kind enough to write expressing their thanks for the book's practical, no-nonsense style and approach to the subject. This has encouraged the first author, Malcolm McDonald, to update the book continually in previous editions, and after the sixth edition, to ask his esteemed colleague Professor Hugh Wilson to join him as co-author. Originally a computer scientist, Hugh brings to the book deep experience in the latest thinking on marketing in a digital world, including integrated marketing communications, e-commerce, multichannel strategy and customer relationship management (CRM). The authors have been working together on how to evolve marketing planning in a digital world for over 20 years.

The purpose of this book is quite simply to explain and demonstrate how to prepare and use a marketing plan. It is equally relevant for consumer, service and industrial goods companies, as well as not-for-profit organizations, since the process is universal.

It is based on our research into the marketing planning practices of industrial, service ...