commonly employed non-rational processes of strategy making -that the content of strong marketing strategies is, to a useful degree, well defined by the extant literature. This content definition is useful in evaluating the outputs of marketing strategy making processes and offers a valuable alternative to attempting to correlate strategy making process with organisational outputs -the normative, prescriptive models of strategic marketing planning are not an accurate description of most practice. This suggests that, for many practitioners, the practical application of the process falls some way short of the ideal -the effectiveness of normative strategic marketing planning is contingent upon both internal and external factors, both of which are limited in
INTRODUCTIONStrong marketing strategies are clearly important to the effectiveness of an organisation and so the effectiveness of marketing strategy making processes is an important consideration for both academics and practitioners. Various approaches have been made towards understanding and improving such processes. This paper attempts to synthesise these perspectives to create a more rounded and deeper understanding of how marketing strategies are made and how they might be improved. In short, the findings of this work suggest:-that rational planning processes contribute to organisational effectiveness. No reported methodology, however, is able to say more than that, and relatively little is known about the value of the more Abstract This paper contributes to the literature concerning the marketing strategy process. It reviews the extant literature in this field, drawing out areas of consensus and gaps in that literature. The principal gaps identified concern non-rational strategy making processes and the combined implications of internal and external contingencies. Using well-established theories from the sociological perspective of the organisational behaviour literature, this work proposes relevant questions for future research in this field. [16][17][18][19] This phase of research therefore concluded that the planning/performance link was in fact unproved. Further, it suggested that such a simple correlation would never be possible. Instead, the consensus of this work was that, at best, planning is only effective within a certain set of contingent conditions and that effectiveness itself was a complex construct, dependent upon the organisation's goals and situation. The third and most recent phase of this work suggests a position somewhere between the unbridled positivism of the first and the inconclusive relativism of the second. Partly, this work paralleled the development of ideas about measuring organisational performance. [20][21][22][23] Further, it reflected more sophisticated work that attempted to allow for the many contingent effects on effectiveness. [24][25][26][27][28] This work therefore considers the performance/planning link within the limits of environmental contingencies and the context of organisation specific objectives. Within those...