A marketing strategy is the premise that informs and guides a company's marketing objectives. It logically sets out the broad framework that is necessary to ensure that the organization is able to anticipate and respond quickly to changes, thereby taking advantage of opportunities and minimizing threats as they present themselves. In the broad perspective of the corporate structure, marketing is analogous to an orchestra. Though not the composer, it serves in no lesser of a function than that of the conductor, transforming the company's manuscript to delivering the music that the audience desires – in this case, the correct balance of the elements of the marketing mix elements skillfully matched against the company's and its customers' expectations. This is achieved by:
1. Providing the guiding philosophy
2. Providing the inputs to the strategic (Top Management) planners
3. Designing requisite strategies for the SBUs to obtain their individual objectives.
To this end, marketers play an integrating role in delivering customer value and satisfaction while ensuring that the organization`s goals and objectives are met (Kotler, Principles of Marketing 9th edition, p61). Designing the marketing strategy is a very painstaking task, to say the very least. Several factors must be continuously considered in all the markets that the organization serves. These factors are present in the three business environments that exist, namely:
1. The micro-environment
2. The meso-environment
3. The macro-environment.
At each of these levels are complexities that must be carefully anticipated and addressed. The process is further complicated when the organization embarks on expansions of all types.
Given these complexities and the current and foreseeable continuous "break-neck" pace of global expansions, other dimensions have now become the norm. However, there are other complexities that are now latently awaiting the stage on which to launch their assau...