Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

CHAPTER 2 STRATEGIC MARKETING PLANNING
executives in the company or organisation have a responsibility for developing the strate-
gic profile of the company and giving it a strategic focus. Strategic planning and strategic 
marketing planning share many activities, although strategic planning has more breadth 
and covers all business activities. A market orientation must permeate the whole of an 
organisation, but the strategic marketing plan is just one of several functional plans that 
feed into the overall strategic plan of a company. Marketing management, however, with 
its specific responsibility for managing the interface between the organisation and its envi-
ronment (both customers and competitors), has an increasingly important role to play in 
overall strategy development. 
Marketing strategy should be set in the context of overall corporate strategy. Once the 
overall direction of the organisation has been decided, with appropriate input from all 
relevant stakeholders, marketing strategy will need to be aligned to ensure that direction 
is achieved.
2.1 
Defining the business purpose or mission 
For many organisations, a useful starting point in strategy formulation is to define a mission 
or purpose. Tim Smit, co-founder and executive vice chair of Eden Project Ltd in Cornwall, 
UK, set out to build the biggest global eco-brand and to change the way people think about 
themselves and their relationship with the planet on which they live (see www.edenproject.
com/eden-story/about-us/sir-tim-smit-kbe ). The mission was stated as ‘to promote the 
understanding and responsible management of the vital relationship between plants, people 
and resources leading to a sustainable future for all’. The Millennium Commission weighed 
in with £37.5 million of Lottery funding to single Eden out as the landmark project of the 
far southwest, and its subsequent contributions brought the total to just over £56 million 
( www.edenproject.com/eden-story/about-us/our-funding ). Other major sources of fund-
ing included the EU and Southwest Regional Development Agency (£50 million between 
them) and £20 million of commercial loans, in order to create a complex of greenhouse 
domes (or biomes) and an Outdoor Garden covering the 11.5 hectares of a disused clay 
pit at St Austell. Importantly, it gave the people working on the project a worthwhile set 
of objectives to strive for, and to commit to. Since opening to the public in 2001, Eden has