Marketing Plans, 9th 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 invite two contemporary thought-leaders in marketing to join him as authors: Professor Hugh Wilson (from the seventh edition), and Dr Dave Chaffey (from this edition). Both add deep experience in today's digitally enabled marketing, from integrated marketing communications and e-commerce to multichannel strategy and customer relationship management (CRM). They are also both highly experienced educators and authors. 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, ...