Describe market planning process

Market planning process

Step 1: Define the Business Mission
The mission statement is a broad description of firm’s objectives and the scope of activities it plans to undertake. It attempts to answer two main questions: What type of business are we? What do we need to do to accomplish our goals and objectives? These questions are usually answered at the highest corporate level before thy marketing executives get involved. Most firms want to maximize the stock and paying firm dividends. Marketing holds the primary responsibility of enhancing the value of the company’s products for its customers. Another key goal embedded in the mission statement is to build a sustainable competitive advantage i.e. something that a firm can persistently do better than its competitors. A competitive advantage acts like a wall that the firm has built around its position in the market making it hard for outside competitors to contact customers inside known as the marketer’s target market.

Step 2: Conduct a Situation Analysis using SWOT
After developing a mission, a firm next must perform a situation analysis using SWOT to access both the internal environment with regard to its Strength and Weaknesses and the external environment in terms of its Opportunities and Threats


A company’s strength refers to the positive internal attributes of the firm like the Etihad airways reputation as a quality air travel company. Also Starbucks licenses its brands to business partners that produce ready to drink products like Frappuccino.
Opportunities pertain to the positive aspects of the external environment. The most significant opportunity to Starbucks’ is its ability to build its current brand and businesses and making 108 million dollars of the 564 million dollars coming from international businesses
Weaknesses are negative attributes of the firm with Starbucks’ having a heavy reliance on its relationships with its joint ventures and licensed outlet partners to open new stores
Threats are the negative aspects of a company’s external environment. Starbucks’ has most of its retail locations in U.S which is an almost saturated market. If U.S demand drops, Starbucks’ would be in real trouble.


Step 3: Identifying and Evaluating Opportunities
The firm divide the market place into subgroups or segments, determines which of those segments it should target and finally decides how it shoild position its products and services to best meet the needs of those chosen groups. Since a firm cannot satisfy everyone’s needs, it has to segment the larger market to comprise of consumers who respond similarly to afirm’s marketing efforts. Market segmentation can be based on geographical location, behaviour, psychological and demographics. After identifying the market segment the firm then develops a variety of products that match the wants and needs of the different market segments.
After a firm has identified the various market segments it might pursue, it evaluates each market segment’s attractiveness and decides which to pursue using a process called market targeting. Coca-Cola, for instance, makes several different types of Coke, including regular, Coke II and caffeine free and then it adds in various combinations of these types . it also markets Sprite for those who don’t like dark colas.
After deciding which segments to pursue, it determines how it wants to be positioned within the segments. Market positioning involves the process of defining the market mix variables so that target customers have a clear, distinctive and desirable understanding of what the product does or represents in comparison with competing products.

Step 4: Implement the market mix and allocate resources
After a firm has identified and evaluated different growth opportunities the real actiion begins. Marketers implement the actual marketing mix for each product and service on the basis of what they believe their target market will value
Product and value creation: they include services. Firms develop products and services that customers perceive as valuable enough to buy

Price and value capture: firms provide a product or a serviceand in return gets money. Value based marketing requires firms charge a price that customers perceive as giving them a good value for the product they receive. Firms may practice

Cost based pricing- a firm determines the cost of producing or providing a product and then adds a fixed amount above that total to arrive at the selling price.

Competitor based pricing- a firm prices below, at or above its competitors offerings.

Value based pricing- a firm determines the perceived value of the product from the customers’s point of view and then prices accordingly.

3. Place and value delivery:
the firm must be able to make the product readily accessible when and where the customer wants it e.g to buy an airline ticket one has to go to a travel agent office or the actual airport to access the product tarvel.

4. Prormotion and value communication: marketers communicate the value of their offering, or the value proposition to their customers through a variety of medias like television, radio, magazines, sales forces and the internet.


Step 5: Evaluate Performance using Marketing Metrics
This is the final step of the market planning process. It includes evaluating the results of the strategy and implementation program using maketing metrics, a metric is a measuring system that quantifies a trend, dynamic or characteristic. They are used to explain why things happened and even forecast. They make it possible to compare results across regions, product lines and time periods helping the firm determine why it achieved or did not achieve its performance goals.
At each level of an organisation, the business unit and its managers should be held accountable only for the revenues, expenses and profits that they can control
Also a firm can evaluate its performance by comparing its performance over time or to competing firms using common financial metrics such as sales and profits.
Also firm can asses its performance using revenues or sales and profits.
In portfolio analysis management evaluates the firm’s various products and businesses and allocates resources according to which products are expected to be most profitable in the for the firm in the future. It’s also called strategic business unit (SBU

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Mukamimuriuki answered the question on November 18, 2018 at 11:15