Marketing planning is a tool that helps a company monitor and controls the internal and external factors that affect profit. Thanks to marketing planning, each company division understands the enterprise’s competitive position and what should be achieved in the future (Fahy and Jobber, 2019). Malcolm McDonald highlighted several critical barriers that impede marketing managers from efficient planning (McDonald, 1991). It is interesting to examine those in the modern business context.
Some of the factors identified by McDonald’s are not relevant today since many things in management have improved. Even the smallest ones, most businesses mastered the skills of deep marketing analysis of the market, trends, and audience. Moreover, in modern managers’ hands, there are now substantial technological capabilities for collecting and analyzing data (Huang and Rust, 2020). There are more marketers specializing in different platforms in the corporate world nowadays. The growing importance of networking and professional development has also displaced the knowledge barrier (Asseraf et al., 2019). It is hard to complain about the lack of a systematic approach to marketing planning. Since the time of MacDonald, many new management frameworks and concepts have also allowed us to say goodbye to this barrier. Thus, those factors are not as valid anymore as they used to be 40 years ago.
However, some of the ten barriers still confuse managers with marketing planning. For example, although it has become an essential element of most companies, corporate culture can still cause marketing failures. This is mainly due to neglect on the part of managers. This also includes organizational barriers that may arise if the company does not adapt to changing market trends (Asseraf et al., 2019). Although to a lesser extent, marketing is still sometimes confused with advertising. Thus, the concepts proposed by McDonald’s are partially applicable to modern business.
Reference List
Asseraf, Y., Lages, L. F., & Shoham, A. (2019) ‘Assessing the drivers and impact of international marketing agility’, International Marketing Review, 36(2), pp. 289–315. Web.
Fahy, J. and Jobber, D. (2019) EBOOK: Foundations of Marketing, 6e. McGraw Hill.
Huang, M. H., and Rust, R. T. (2020). A strategic framework for artificial intelligence in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49(1), 30–50. Web.
McDonald, M. H. B. (1991) ‘Ten barriers to marketing planning’, Journal of Consumer Marketing, 8(2), pp. 45–58. Web.