The Marketing Plan

 The Marketing Plan

The marketing plan is the strategy for implementing the components of marketing: creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging value. Once a company has decided what business it is in and expressed that in a mission statement, the firm then develops a corporate strategy. Marketing strategists subsequently use the corporate strategy and mission and combine that with an understanding of the market to develop the company’s marketing plan. This is the focus of Chapter 2 "Strategic Planning". Figure 1.5 "Steps in Creating a Marketing Plan" shows the steps involved in creating a marketing plan. The book then moves into understanding customers. Understanding the customer’s wants and needs; how the customer wants to acquire, consume, and dispose of the offering; and what makes up their personal value equation are three important goals. Marketers want to know their customers—who they are and what they like to do—so as to uncover this information. Generally, this requires marketing researchers to collect sales and other related customer data and analyze it