Strategic planning is a process of comprehensively determining and mapping the future direction of a company through analysis of the current position in terms of activity then analyzing different courses of action that can enable the firm achieve its long term objectives (Gale, 1985).
The key components of strategic planning are as follows:
Vision
This is a clear outline of what the organization wants to be in future, in different areas like profitability, social corporate responsibility among other areas. As a way of example, there is an enterprise whose vision is ‘’to be the world’s most respected group in protecting shareholder’s wealth’’ .This gives a summary of the enterprise’s objective both in short term and in the long term (Menon, 1999).
Mission
This will be a brief explanation of the reason behind the existence of the enterprise, as well as its pursuit in a certain economic domain. This will also give a brief explanation of what the enterprise does so as to ensure its vision is achieved .As a way of example, the enterprise whose vision is mentioned above has the following mission ‘’We put smiles in the faces of our stakeholders’’ (Menon, 1999).
Values
This will give the common beliefs among all the stake holders of the enterprise that will make all the pursuits of the enterprise’s mission and vision attainable. For the example given above, the values of the enterprise are: integrity, trailblazing, professionalism as well as no nonsense approach to issues (Menon, 1999).
Distribution highlights the stages through which a product or service goes through in the process of channeling it to the final consumer.Mostly,in the distribution chain ,there will be channels with each channel representing a middle man who facilitates the smooth transfer of the product(Gale, 1985).
The components may be as follows:
Producer sells directly to the consumer (no middle man involved)
Producer sells to wholesaler who in turn sales to retailer then going direct to the consumer (two middle men involved)
Producer sells to retailer who then passes the product to the final consumer (one middle man involved)
Ideally, when the middle men increase in a chain of distribution, then the price of the product will go up since each of the middlemen has to be remunerated for his/her input.
The channels will give the four P’s of marketing mix, which are: place, product, promotion and price (Gale, 1985).
References
Gale .B. (1985). Total quality management. (10th edition).Massachusetts: Cambridge printing press.
Menon, A. (1999). Antecedents and Consequences of Marketing Strategy Making. Journal of Marketing, British market research association. Vol. 63 (2): 36-56.
