Planning for physical distribution

Traditionally under-managed and poorly represented in the decision taking hierarchy, the physical distribution function of many manufacturing companies has not been strong on long range planning. With its basic input, the plans of production and marketing activities, vulnerable to a host of fluctuating outside factors, and with the present economic situation making any kind of planning extremely difficult, planning for Physical Distribution activity must be cautious yet flexible in the coming decade.     

Research Notes on the Best British Companies: a Peer Evaluation of Britain's Leading Firms

The assessment of company performance is one of the major dilemmas facing the strategic researcher. This paper reviews the alternative methods available, then uses one approach, peer assessment, to produce a guide to British company performance. Britain's best companies are identified and their profiles are examined. Their declared financial strengths and relative weaknesses in marketing and innovation are identified.     

An investigation of company product decision making

This article is concerned with an investigation of the approaches taken by companies in making product decisions. The first part is concerned with a review of the range of product decisions as presented within the literature. This range is established within the context of corporate planning, with a major split between long term strategic planning product decisions, and short term operational planning product decisions. The second part of the article is concerned with the results of a survey that was designed to investigate the criteria that companies use within their product decision making. These criteria included those applicable to strategic planning, but also incorporated a range of criteria applicable to short term operational planning, as proposed in a recent article by Greenley [8]. The overall conclusion to the survey results was that a common and universal approach to product decision making cannot be identified within this sample of companies. A low level of agreement as to the relative degree of importance of the criteria was evident, and, little attention to differentiating product decisions with time was also evident. The results also challenge the importance given by the literature to the concepts of product life cycle, portfolio analysis and synergy. Finally, the author suggests two implications as a consequence of these results.     

The hazards of strategic planning for global markets

Global strategic marketing planning has emerged as a key process in managing today's worldwide marketplace. This survey of 90 large American global corporations reveals that most are bottom-up planners. US firms appear to have distinct cost and numbers orientations. Industry and competitive analyses are used in many companies, although managers appear to lack suitable frameworks for SWOT analyses. Economic climate changes tend to be most disruptive to global planning efforts. When faced with non-achievement of goals, most firms reformulate both objectives and strategies.     

Reunite management and planning

In many companies the planning function has been removed from the mainstream of corporate life. Planning (and planners) have been isolated from the locus of decision- making power and insulated from information vital to the planning process. The outcome has been the generation of irrelevant plans and a proliferation of impotent planners. The author argues for a reintegration of technical expertise and managerial power, a reunion of planning and decision-making processes.     

Corporate planning in South African companies

This paper is based on the research understaken by the author for his dostorate thesis. It describes the research methodology, data analysis and results of a survey of strategic planning as practised by South African companies, based over 500 questionnaires. The influence of the various interest groups revealed in the analysis is compared and discussed.     

Market segmentation: an integrated framework

Contrary to the narrow, demand-oriented approach to market segmentation taken in much of the marketing and planning literature, this article illustrates a broader, integrated framework which includes both the demand and supply sides of the competitive equation. The author argues that starting with ‘product’ characteristics is both an easier and more actionable way of segmenting markets than the traditional marketing approach that typically begins with the customer or ‘people’ characteristics. This approach can be employed by a business to make decisions about entering a market segment, differentiating a brand from its competition, positioning it in the market and communicating its quality to the customers. Customers, too, generally rely on product characteristics to perceive and evaluate the quality claims made by different competitors. Thus, the article bridges an important gap between strategy formulation and strategy implementation: an area often neglected in the strategy literature. The proposed approach focuses not only on customer benefits or needs, but also on the resources necessary to satisfy them and demonstrates this with examples from Apple, Church & Dwight and many other companies. To show a practical application, the article presents a price-quality-benefit segmentation profile of the US toothpaste market which revealed three strategic groups.     

Strategic planning in small and medium-sized companies

In analysing the characteristics of strategic planning applications in different types and sizes of companies, confusion often arises not because of the application but because of the definitions utilized. This paper analyses the use of strategic planning concepts in small and medium-sized companies in Holland. As the author points out, in this context the definition of small and medium-sized is determined by five strategically relevant criteria which are distinctive. The author points out, however, that whilst these criteria are distinctive of the category of small and medium-sized companies surveyed, they do not all have to occur at the same time; the higher the number that do occur, the more typical the company. Whilst this paper does not, as the author admits, represent the result of a systematic survey, the authors wide experience as a consultant is in itself a valuable background to his analysis. Indeed, the findings stated in this paper represent an analysis of the strategic planning practises of some 75–100 companies. Therefore, in view of the detailed criteria utilized and the number of companies analysed the results represent an important addition to our knowledge of the application of strategic planning.     

Planning in Nigerian business

This article focuses on two specific areas of Corporate Planning in Nigeria, i.e. what are the special problems of planning in a less developed economic environment and how have these problems affected the practice of corporate planning in such an economy? The author reviews the planning environment in Nigeria and finds that formal corporate planning is fairly widespread, a reflection of their association with multinational companies in many cases.     

Recent changes in long range corporate planning in Japan

In his article the author discusses an emerging new stage in Japanese long range corporate planning which reflects the struggles of Japanese companies against the new economic situation in which it is very difficult to enjoy a high economic growth rate. Among the many long range plans launched in 1976 and 1977 Hitachi's new long range plan provides an excellent illustration of the main features of the struggles. Using Hitachi as an example various new aspects manifested in Stage IV of Japanese long range corporate planning are described with reference to the economic and social background and its implications for Japanese companies.     

Conceptual overview and applications of international marketing positioning

The author explores differing meanings of the term and concept of “positioning” in marketing. He concludes there are two different types of “positions” - market and product - and two different territories in which the positions are being observed or measured: the market place and the consumer's mind. These distinctions are helpful in the process of planning a marketing strategy.Michael Perry then applies this “position” idea in marketing to a real case of marketing oranges in four European countries. The results demonstrate how the concepts of “market position” can be measured and used in planning marketing programmes.     

Planning innovation

This paper deals with the concept of planning for innovation, using marketing as a basis for that planning. The author claims that marketing really controls the whole operation of planning for innovation, even the details of development and design, because customers not only use the resulting product or service; they pay for it and make everything possible.     

Marketing planning in India—A survey

This paper describes the response to a study of the marketing planning function in large-size companies in India and the techniques used to assess the level of sophistication achieved. The authors analyse their findings and conclude that although a high level of sophistication had not yet been achieved, the process was accelerating and there was a positive relationship between the size of the company and its profitability and the accompanying level of marketing planning sophistication.     

Formal planning in major U.S. corporations

As the world about us changes, managers in all types of institutions try to cope in a variety of ways. In the early 1960s, many corporate managers realized they could not make sound decisions about future business activities in an expedient, reactive manner because their firms were growing very large and complex with new technologies, products, markets and competition to deal with. As a result, formal planning techniques which had been used in narrow functional applications were introduced on a much broader scale and formal long-range planning became popular. New corporate planning functions appeared in many companies, as well as new staff planning specialists and planning executives. The author conducted a field study on the design of these systems in the mid-1960s and he argues that they showed great promise for improved management.With this history in mind, we might ask why such subjects as ‘planning techniques’ and ‘problems of implementation’ are still topics of concern. It would seem that such techniques would be well known and established in most firms after 10–15 years. However, this is not the case, for during a second field study of corporate planning systems which was completed in 1976 the author found that many corporations, including some of the largest ones, had redesigned their planning systems in the early 1970s, essentially making a fresh start at formal long-range planning. (See Table 1).From his recent field study the author concludes that all corporations experience problems in implementing and using a formal planning system. The nature of these problems and some possible remedies are the subjects upon which this article focuses.     

Marketing the telephone in a de-regulated environment

The author responds to the injunction ‘Get up and grow’, believing that British companies should be discovering profitable marketing opportunities to build on. In recent years improved profitability has come through financially led contraction and rationalization, not through marketing-inspired expansion; and the consequent lack of investment in growing marketplaces increasingly puts U.K. companies at a disadvantage against overseas competitors. He illustrates British Telecom's response to this challenge.     

Strategic planning and inflation

The author of this article argues that inflation is a neglected area in corporate planning despite the events of 1974/1975. The planning problem which companies face because of inflation is defined, while acknowledging that it is difficult to solve. Recent experience has shown that inflation has a direct impact on every major area of business. Thus it is essential that there is a meaningful attempt to handle these problems in planning. The author discusses his approach to grasping this nettle.     

Environmental scanning— the state of the art

In recent years increasing attention has been devoted to amplifying individual elements of corporate planning systems—among them the environmental scanning element. Moreover, the unprecendented intensification of corporate environmental complexity has led to a proliferation of approaches to scanning the general environment. However, a recent survey of a dozen U.S. companies has questioned whether such scanning practices have, in fact, been established in an ongoing manner. The author provides evidence here, based on publicly available information, of at least nine leading organizations where the practice of scanning for planning appears to have taken firm root. A discussion of the many facets of the resulting composite picture of sophisticated wide angle scanning leads to the anticipation that it is, in fact, on the threshold of rapid diffusion in the corporate world.     

Managing growth: New products and new markets at Monsanto

In a little more than a decade, bioengineering has moved from the esoteric halls of academia and R & D departments to the center stage of major corporate financial strategic planning. For many major chemical and refining companies, genetic manipulation is becoming the centerpiece of survival. Dupont, for instance, is considering getting rid of the $21-billion Conoco Company in order to devote resources to the development of, and more importantly, the marketing of bioengineered products. Monsanto, largely because of its emphasis on reducing the environmental impact of its agricultural products, is one of the few major corporations to cultivate profit from the soil surface through design for the environment. Monsanto's CEO, Robert Shapiro, has made the consideration of the company's impact on the environment dependent on the company's competetive future.     

Technological forecasting as a guide for managerial planning

The author discusses the limitations of statistical forecasting as a guide to managerial planning, with specific reference to technological and market changes in the glass industry. He advocates the use of a Forecast Adjustment Matrix as a framework for identifying marketing and technological factors which might produce significant deviations from established trends. Finally, he suggests that the analysis and adjustment of technological and market trends should be made periodically. The whole technological forecasting operation should be formalized and it should be made the specific responsibility of one organizational unit within the company.     

Customer Behavior in an Online Ordering Application: A Decision Scoring Model*

This research presents the development of behavioral scoring models to predict future customer purchases in an online ordering application. Internet retailing lowers many barriers for customers switching between retailers for repeat purchases; thus, retaining existing customers is a key challenge for achieving profitability. Survey data were collected from 1,089 online customers of two companies. The subjective survey data were then used to predict purchases over the ensuing 12 months based on data from the company databases. The analysis illustrates the general applicability of predictive models of future customer purchases while also demonstrating the need to develop specific models tailored for an individual company's operating and marketing environment. The models provide insight on how companies can target marketing dollars more effectively and allocate investment across multiple operational areas for maximum return. The research answers a call for rigorous research in the area of predictive marketing, an area in which many companies are excelling but where there is a scarcity of detailed knowledge regarding application of such models.