Most marketers today feel pressure to measure (quantify) their level of success in marketing planning. In your opinion, is it easy to measure marketing's success (compared to, say, measuring the success of a firm's financial management or production quality)? Explain your viewpoint.
1. The Boston Consulting Group matrix identifies products as stars, cash cows, question marks, and dogs. Do you think this is a useful way for organizations to examine their businesses? What are some examples of product lines that fit in each category?
2. In this chapter we talked about how firms do strategic, functional, and operational planning. Yet some firms are successful without formal planning. Do you think planning is essential to a firm's success? Can planning ever hurt an organization?
3. Most planning involves strategies for growth. But is growth always the right direction to pursue? Can you think of some organizations that should have contraction rather than expansion as their objective? Do you know of any organizations that have planned to get smaller rather than larger in order to be successful?
4. When most people think of successful marketing, internal firm culture doesn't immediately come to mind as a contributing factor. What is a corporate culture? What are some reasons a firm's corporate culture is important to the capability of doing good marketing? Give some examples of what you consider to be a good corporate culture for marketing.
5. Review the AMA Code of Ethical Norms and Values for Marketers, provided in the chapter. Which of the areas represented within the document do you anticipate are the most challenging for marketers to consistently follow? What makes these issues particularly troublesome? Do you think marketing in general does a good job adhering to the AMA Code? Provide specific evidence from your knowledge and experience to support your position.