Developing Marketing Planning in Reality

A number of issues which are relevant to the introduction of marketing planning into a medium‐sized product‐oriented engineering business are addressed. In addition how a tailor‐made management development programme can be used as a means of stimulating and facilitating the individual and organisational changes necessary to achieve a marketing planning orientation are discussed. It is explained how the marketing planning approach requires modification to allow management to develop their skills and achieve success in small stages. This is necessary for both political and educational reasons. The case study described demonstrates how the gap between theory (academic) and practice (commerce) can be successfully bridged.