How to use this book to achieve the best results
At the end of each chapter, you will find a number of application questions. More importantly, there are also a number of exercises designed to help you translate the theory into practice in the context of your own organization.
As you work through this book, you will find that some of the exercises are diagnostic and enable you to ‘plot’ where your company is. Some will help you to understand what might be happening to your organization. Other exercises are more concerned with generating factual information about your organization, its products, its markets or its planning processes. We find this combination of exercises not only provides you with insights and learning about many aspects of marketing planning, but it also helps you to assemble information which can contribute to a marketing plan for your organization.
Whenever scoring and interpretation are required for an exercise, you will find the answers are provided at the end of each chapter.
This book is written to fulfil three principal needs. The first relates to the process of marketing planning, which, while theoretically simple, is in practice extraordinarily complex, involving, as it does, people, systems and organizational structures. One purpose, then, is to ensure that readers fully understand the process, what the pitfalls are and how to negotiate them.
The second purpose is to ensure that readers know which are the appropriate marketing diagnostic tools, structures ...
