Chapter Overview

For firms with multiple businesses or product lines, different administrative relationships between the business unit and corporate headquarters are appropriate for different competitive strategies. Prospector businesses perform better with high levels of autonomy, fewer shared resources, and more top-line focused reward systems than defender businesses.
Within a given business—whether it’s part of a larger organization or a one-product entrepreneurial start-up—different functional competencies, levels of specialization, amounts of employee participation in decision making, and mechanisms for the resolution of internal conflicts are needed to effectively implement varying competitive strategies.
Writing a formal marketing action plan is a key step toward ensuring the effective execution of a strategic marketing program because it spells out what actions need to be taken, when, and by whom. Written plans also provide the benchmarks by which the marketing strategy can be evaluated and controlled, as discussed in the next chapter. Most managers and entrepreneurs are evaluated primarily on the results they deliver. Effective design of control systems, whether for strategic control or for marketing performance measurement, helps ensure the delivery of planned results. A step-by-step process for doing so is provided in this chapter.
Control systems that deliver the right information—in a timely manner and in media, formats, and levels of aggregation that users need and can easily use—can be important elements for establishing competitive advantage. Four key questions that designers of such systems should address are discussed in this chapter.
From time to time, it is useful to step back from day-to-day results and take a longer view of marketing performance for a company or an SBU. A marketing audit, as outlined in this chapter, is a useful tool for conducting such an assessment.

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