........
Operational
marketing
policies and
strategic
positioning........
Strategic
intent........
Strategic
reality........
Strategic
gapsMarketing strategy for this market:Conclusions, implications and interpretation for action:544 The Marketing Book
One method for achieving this is the analysis of
‘strategic gaps’: the gaps between ‘strategic
intent’ and ‘strategic reality’.
Marketing intentions and
marketing realities
The analysis of strategic gaps involves evaluat-
ing the differences which exist between the
marketing strategies which planners have for-
mulated inside the organization and the
delivery of these promises in the customer mar-
ketplace. This has been stylized elsewhere as the
contrast between ‘intended’ and ‘realized’ strat-
egies (Mintzberg, 1988). For present purposes
this can be reduced to something very simple:
intended strategy or strategic intent– what
management and planners inside the
organization think the business is about in the
marketplace; and
perceived strategy or strategic reality– what the
business is actually about in the marketplace,
as it is seen and understood by salespeople,
distributors and customers.The approach illustrated in Figure 21.4 leads to
some of the most significant practical questions
to be confronted in dealing with the imple-
mentation issue.
The technique is straightforward and eas-
ily applied, but can be exceptionally productive
in isolating the existence and underlying rea-
sons for implementation problems in market-
ing. The procedure is as follows:1 Identify the market in question and the
marketing strategywhich is being (or will be)
pursued. This is frequently where we
encounter the first difficulties – when
executives struggle to aptly describe their
market, or to encapsulate in a few words
the strategy for that market, then we may
have found the first source of implementation
barriers. If we truly understand our
marketing strategy, we should be able toFigure 21.4 Strategic intent versus strategic reality