Product Description

This text explains the whole process of marketing planning, from the initial assessment of a company's business plan, to ensuring a company achieves its profit target. It also provides a step-by-step plan for the reader to devise their own marketing plan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #119218 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 578 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Blackadder, Baldrick's "cunning plan" usually turned out be neither particularly cunning nor indeed planned. In marketing you can't get away with either as effective marketing planning lies at the centre of most companies' "make a buck" schemes.

Malcolm McDonald's book is the bible for anyone charged with the responsibility of preparing and implement a marketing plan. From the organisational issues, timescale and techniques the-"who, when and how"--to the projected outcomes--every part of the "five-year" marketing scheme is examined. In this fourth edition Malcolm McDonald has addressed "new" issues such as key account handling and electronic marketing using the Internet. He has also added a step-by-step marketing planning chapter, what he calls his "fast-track" approach, invaluable if you need to learn the basics in a hurry. The book is very well put together and gets top marks for clear English. There are lots of diagrams, models, case studies and exercises that help you "diagnose" the state of health of your company's current marketing approach. Chapters begin with a summary and end with a review, so all the choicest bits of information are easily digestible. Marketing Plans follows a logical approach and takes the student through a sequence of activities, giving a clear set of objectives and the means to achieve them. --Kristen Bowditch

Review
'I am extremely impressed by the step-by-step lucidity of what is presented.'
Dr. D. H. Eaton, North Carolina University
'A book reaching the quantities sold of Marketing Plans must be a book that is really used. It is not difficult to see why, Malcolm McDonald writes clearly about what to do in marketing and how to do it. Unlike many academic marketing writers, he will never let you forget that marketing ends with -ing.'
Kenneth Simmonds, Professor of Marketing and International Business, London Business School
'Malcolm McDonald is clearly one of the most respected Professors of Marketing in Europe and the author of a number of outstanding books. The fact that Marketing Plans has been such a massive seller offers testimony of this. McDonald writes with clarity and insight that is becoming increasingly rare today. It is powerful, up-to-date and has proved that it works. I commend it to you!'
John D. Ryans, Jr, Bridgestone Professor of International Business and Professor of International Marketing, Kent State University, Ohio
'It is clearly and powerfully written and is probably the best book on the theory and practice of marketing planning ever written. It is a bestseller in Europe and I strongly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in marketing planning.'
Warren J. Keegan, Professor of International Business and Marketing Director, Institute for Global Business Strategy, Pace University, New York
The acclaimed guru on marketing planning is back! This time, it's a completely revised and updated version of his international best seller (yes, business books do have their high flyer!). Marketing Plans, which carries the endorsement of the CharteredInstitute of Marketing, is an acknowledged leading text on what might otherwise be a turgid and laborious subject for most managers. McDonald takes the reader from first marketing principles right the way through to the development of a complete segemented marketing plan, with advice on implementation issues, and the creation of an on-going marketing planning system - something often missing from some organisations which regard marketing planning as 'an exercise for the consultants' once every five to ten years when someone else is paying! Marketing Plans is nearly 600 pages in total, but McDonald, who cleverly appears to understand that busy chief executives have little time for full-blown managements epics, directs the surfers straight to chapter 13 for a step-by-step overview of a marketing planning system. Whilst Marketing Plans is obviously designed for the full breadth of commercial organisations, the techniques revealed are in the main, immediately transferable into the not-for-profit sectors such as the arts. And if you're still not convinced that marketing planning is a good thing? Well, the ever-enterprising McDonald has also published two Larson-esque cartoon versions of Marketing Plans - but that's for another review.
Arts Business Magazine - 26th Feb 2001

About the Author
MA(Oxon), MSc, PhD, D.Litt. FCIM FRSA, until recently was Professor of Marketing and Deputy Director Cranfield School of Management, with special responsibility for E-business. Malcolm is a graduate in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, in Business Studies from Bradford University Management Centre, and has a PhD from Cranfield University. He also has an Honorary Doctorate from Bradford University. Malcolm has extensive industrial experience, including a number of years as Marketing Director of Canada Dry.

Customer Reviews

Nice isn't the word, excellent doesn't really describe it...
AWESOME, now that's more like it!

I read this book, and it took me quite a long time to get through it. Not that it's hard to read, but because this books handles about topics that we marketeers come across every day. So we can put this book to the test.

It's a perfect guideline for those amongst us that need to keep a broad vision on the what's marketing all about, and how we need to work to get to a "perfect" (impossible) marketingplan.

Impossible? Maybe not anymore - ??? This is something you need to check out for yourself.

I recommend it.

The bible of marketing planning
This book is the ultimate if you are serious about creating truely strategic marketing plans for your business. It basically gives you all the fundamentals required and takes it so much further, any company big or small can benefit from the knowledge in this book. It has been updated well and questions some of the traditional theories, i.e. features an updated SWOT.

Also, if you read the intro it gives you a bit of a guide on how best to use it, so if you just need to get a breif overview of how to structure a plan you can pick the best chapter/s to read, if you want to go more in depth you can dip in and out of it.

All in all, this is an essential text for marketers, don't bother with Kottler he hasn't done anything good in 15 years.