Marketing Planning and the Size of the Organization

Can any size of organization use marketing plans?

Marketing planning research has been based on organizations of various sizes. Most studies consider large corporations more specifically large multi-divisional companies (Ames 1968), companies selected from the top 100 US spenders on advertising (Cosse and Swan 1983), and companies with more than a £17 million turnover (Piercy and Thomas 1983). SME’s were investigated by Lancaster and Waddelow (1998).

It demonstrates that size does not restrict the adoption of marketing planning. There is little evidence that large corporations always have marketing plans and the SME’s never have marketing plans. It is currently accepted that marketing is greatly underrepresented at board level in the United Kingdom, so how can it be that marketing planning only takes place at a strategic level in large corporations? Is it also fair to contend that SMEs do not plan for marketing simply because there is no evidence of a written formal marketing plan?

Companies of various sizes and turnovers were researched by Hooley, West and Lynch (1984) in the United Kingdom, and by Martin (1987) in the United States. Greenly and Bayus (1996) compared the marketing planning processes of both British and US companies of various sizes. Eastern European marketing planning processes of companies of various sizes were looked at by Hooley (1996). The size of organization varies between studies. The table below summarizes the different sizes of companies that plan for marketing.