LINKING FUTURISTICS WITH MARKETING PLANNING, FORECASTING, AND STRATEGY

Throughout the 1960s the marketing concept was a dominant guideline that became a pervasive force within the entire organization. Strategic planning, with its emphasis on the formulation of the business mission, the identification of strategic alternatives, and contingency planning, became the direction of the 1970s. Therefore, it is surprising to find, after all this emphasis on the identification and satisfaction of customer needs and the necessity for planning and strategy, that few organizations have found a way to link future planning with marketing planning and strategy. Futuristics is the science or art of anticipating and planning for the future. In most firms, strategy is still developed for less than a threeyear period. There are only a small number of companies that have been able to link planning with the development of strategy in a time frame of more than five years. These firms have come to realize that: Business decisions have grown more complex as a result of a changing marketing environment, The only way to ensure profitability and survival is to provide an organizational structure that can develop long‐range planning.