Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control, Third Edition

244 Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control

functions would have a role to play in delivering this. Corporate strategy

can be summarised as being:

● Integrative: The process co-ordinates functional activitytowards a com-

mon goal and takes ‘whole organisation’ view of the corporation.

By defining corporate targets, normally in financial terms, collective

targets are set for the functional groups.

● Provide focus: Strategy defines the scope of the business – general

nature of activities and markets served. This strategic directionallows

functional areas to develop appropriate strategies and tactics.

● Importance: By its very nature, corporate strategy is the process of mak-

ing major business decisions. It defines business direction over the

long termand is critical in setting the overall resource profile available

to the organisation.

● Matching: There is a need to match the organisations activities and

resource base to the current and future business environment.

A useful summation of corporate strategy management is provided in

Figure 12.2. This model takes a top-down view of the overall strategy

process. It identifies the five components vital in achieving corporate

success:

1 Vision: Senior management and other stakeholders must establish an

overall vision of what the corporation should be. This defines the basic

need they fulfil and establishes the generic direction of the business.

Corporate planning

Objectives

Corporate strategy

Marketing strategy

Objectives

Strategy

Marketing tactics

Objectives

Actions

Translate

corporate

strategy into

marketing objectives

(Feedback)

Translate marketing

strategy into

specific tactical

marketing objectives

and actions

(Feedback)

Other functional

strategies

(e.g. operations,

finance)

Figure 12.1
Corporate and
marketing planning
hierarchy