ABSTRACT
Market planning can be envisioned as a process involving two distinct sets of activities: the situation analysis and marketing mix development. The situation analysis involves an assessment of the 3 Cs: company issues, competitor issues, and customer issues. Marketing mix development involves identification and integration of the 4 Ps, the most appropriate product issues, place issues, promotion issues, and price issues. Market planning normally does not require consideration of business plan development because the product planning initiative is within an existing company. There are times when business plan development is necessary particularly in the case of a spin-out or business start-up situation. Market-specific factors are describes the nature of market demand for a given product and the nature of profitability in satisfying such demand. Several factors that should be considered are market size, market growth, market life cycle, seasonality, cyclicity, marketing mix drivers, and profitability. The identification and organization of marketing mix activities is called the marketing strategy process.
