Marketing implementation, organizational change and internal marketing strategy 533
The strategy
formulation–implementation
dichotomy
However, many difficulties arise in dealing
with the implementation issue, not simply
because implementation itself is problematic,
but because conventional approaches to mar-
keting planning and the generation of market-
ing strategies have generally adopted the view
that strategy formulation and implementation
are distinct and sequential activities – a charac-
teristic styled the ‘formulation–implementation
dichotomy’ by Cespedes and Piercy (1996).
Where it exists, this ‘dichotomy’ is fraught with
dangers:
It ignores, or underestimates, the potential
synergy between the process of marketing
strategy formulation and a company’s
implementation capabilities (Bonoma, 1985).
It reduces the ability of an organization to
establish competitive advantage, which draws
on its unique distinguishing characteristics, i.e.
what it is good at or best at in the
marketplace (Hamel and Prahalad, 1989).
It risks divorcing the strategies and plans
produced from the realities of the organization
(Huttet al., 1988).
It takes no account of the need for marketing
to span not merely the externalmarket
boundaries recognized in conventional models
of marketing, but also the internalboundaries
with other functional and organizational
interest groups (Aldrich and Herker, 1977;
Spekman, 1979; Ruekert and Walker, 1987).
It underestimates the significance of the
political and negotiating infrastructure of the
organization, as it impacts on the support of
key managers for strategies, and on the
process of gaining the commitment of
organizational members at all levels (Pfeffer,
1981; Piercy, 1985).
Given the high priority managers place on
developing new ways of more effectively hand-
ling the implementation problem in marketing,
and the dangers of not doing so, the goal of this
chapter is to approach the marketing imple-
mentation issue by asking five important
questions:1 Can we relate our marketing plans and
strategies to the real organizational context for
marketing in a particular company, by
evaluating the degree of organizational stretch
for which we are asking?
2 To what extent does the marketing organization
itself create implementation problems, and
how can these problems be avoided or
resolved?
3 Can we identify the most important sources of
implementation problemsin an organization by
evaluating the existence of strategic gaps?
4 Can we then look at the problems faced in
having these strategic gaps addressed, and the
barriersto this process of change in the
organization?
5 Can we use internal marketingtechniques to
develop implementation strategies (or at least
to provide better guidance as to which
marketing strategies notto pursue, because the
hidden implementation barriers and costs are
too great)?The underlying rationale for this approach is
that it is organizational context that links
strategy formulation and implementation in
marketing, and it is working on this context
that provides us with a way to overcome the
dichotomy discussed above (Walker and Rue-
kert, 1987; Piercy, 1990, 2002). However, this
link is potentially complex, since the strategy
formulation or planning process is itself inex-
tricably part of the organizational context in
which managers work. Understanding the gap
between the generation of marketing strate-
gies and their implementation may be
improved by: examining the formal organiza-
tional positioning and structuring of market-
ing, including the information and intelligence
systems, and the operation of key decision-
making processes like budgeting and planning- and using that understanding to build an