Marketing Strategy Models *

Many of the models and approaches outlined in other chapters of this book address single marketing issues (promotional spending, pricing, salesforce deployment, etc.) within the context of any organization where other factors are assumed constant. For the most part, such approaches are 'bottom-up', and closely akin to the operational philosophy of traditional ORIMS. Consider, in contrast, a large organization with several business divisions and several product lines within each division. Marketing plays a number of roles throughout that organization. At the organizational level, marketing can provide both perspectives and information to help management decide on what the mission of the corporation should be, what the opportunities of the organization might be, what strategies for growth it might have, and how it might develop and manage its portfolio of businesses. The resulting corporate policies provide guidelines fordevelopment of strategy at each business division. And, at the lowest level, the managers of each product and/or market within each division develop their own marketing strategies within the context of the policies and constraints developed at divisional levels. We use the term strategic management process to describe the steps taken at the corporate and divisional level to develop market-driven strategies for organizational survival and growth, while we use the term sfrategic marketing process to refer to the parallel steps taken at the product and/or market level to develop viable marketing plans and programs. Thus, the strategic marketing process takes place within the larger strategic management process of the organization. Thus, in contrast with many of the approaches outlined in earlier chapters, marketing strategy models must reflect the overall corporate mission of the