ABSTRACT
Marketing strategy provides an organization with a framework for carrying out its marketing activities. 'Strategy' is originally a military concept, basically aiming to determine goals and how best to obtain them. This chapter looks at how marketing strategy can be applied to a public organization – insofar as the institutional, organizational and market contexts are very different for a private company than for a traditional public body. It describes the the various steps in the strategic planning process, identifies the appropriate elements and tools of marketing analysis, and discusses the process leading to the determination of marketing strategy, taking into account implementation dynamics and the inherent limitations of this approach. Marketing strategy is one of a company's various functional strategies and must identify priority target groups in a field of activity and/or specific market – with a competitive position resulting from a competitive strategy and the principal measures at instrumental level.
