ABSTRACT
While marketing textbooks often assert, somewhere in the text, that Strategy should reflect Situation Analysis and that 4Ps should be consistent with Strategy, the importance of those relationships is only noted in passing. In the service of comprehensive coverage, marketing textbooks flood us with detail about individual topics, but fail to give sufficient emphasis to the fact that marketing does not "work" unless the three big chunks (Situation Analysis, Strategy and 4Ps) are tightly interrelated. The Growth Gears explains that "marketing" begins by deriving Insight (i.e., developing an understanding of customers' problems). Then sets Strategy based on that insight (i.e., identifies a customer problem that the firm can solve better than competitors). Finally Executes (i.e., develops 4Ps such that every customer touchpoint reinforces the fact that the target firm solves the customer's problem better than competitors). This chapter emphasizes that the gears must be engaged in the order. The Growth Gears warns against such "random acts of marketing.".
