Marketing implementation: building and sharing real market understanding

Suggests that one of the most critical problems faced in achieving the implementation of market strategies is building consensus among managers and technical specialists that change in strategy is needed, to respond to change in the outside marketplace. Observes that without the belief of key players in the need for strategic change, attempts to implement new strategies are likely to be ineffective. However, building this consensus is not likely to be achieved by management direction alone. We face the barrier of corporate culture acting as “the way we see things here”. Demonstrates a structured approach to building real market understanding among key players and line managers as a precursor to developing and implementing new market strategies, which has been used with a large number of companies. It is not a perfect answer, but the approach has proved useful in helping to break free of the inertia of the status quo in managers’ minds. The technique also has some notable implications for the role of the marketing planner and analyst ‐ a move from “teller” and reactive information provider, to manager of the continual process of building market understanding.