Marketing plan: Is it necessary for a firm to evaluate the marketing feasibility of a new

product or service launch?

Estefany, Snchez
Commonly the average business might have one or two ideas about how to launch a new
product or service. Launching new products or services requires not only perseverance but also
an adequate planning, organization, management and control (Soni, & Cohen, 2004). It is well
known the importance of having a business plan for having a business, but also it is known that a
marketing plan serves as the guiding force behind every action that a firm takes where the desired
result is a successful, sustainable and profitable product or service (Kotler, Keller, Cunningham,
& Sivaramakrishnan, 2012). However, few businesses come with the idea of developing
a marketing plan. Therefore, is a marketing plan necessary for a firm to evaluate the marketing
feasibility of a new product or service launch? As a hypothesis, it can be said that a marketing
plan is necessary when launching a product or service since it helps the firm to arrive to informed
as well as adequate marketing decisions. The purpose of this essay is to analyze if indeed a
marketing plan as essential as necessary when launching a new product or service due to there
exists some firms that think that it does not.
First, the current definitions of a marketing plan will be shown in order to have an
understanding of it. Secondly, the importance of a marketing plan will be presented with an
analytical view of it through the following eight paragraphs. Then, the benefits of a marketing
plan as well as a case that serves as an example of a marketing plan application will be displayed
to have a clear view of how a marketing plan helps a firm to have successful results. Finally, the
conclusion of this essay will be pointed out.

First of all, what is a marketing plan? According to the American Association of

Marketing [AMA], it is a document composed of an analysis of the current marketing situation,
opportunities and threats analysis, marketing objectives, marketing strategy, action programs, and
projected or pro-forma income (and other financial) statements. This plan may be the only
statement of the strategic direction of a business, but it is more likely to apply only to a specific
brand or product. In the latter situation, the marketing plan is an implementation device that is
integrated within an overall strategic business plan. On the other hand, it is what is said to be
part of an overall business plan, but in order to be an excellent plan it should have a solid
marketing strategy, since it is the essential part of any marketing plan. The marketing plan
functions from two points: strategy and tactics (Kotler, 1988). Thus, it can be assured that a
marketing plan is closely related to strategy.
However, developing a successful marketing strategy, look for opportunities to sell
products and services and reach a more efficient way to existing and potential customers are not
easy tasks at all. Many business opportunities end in failure or fail to become real due to it fails to
establish the essential link between innovation and the discovery of an interesting idea with the
expected objectives and resources required. Planning is the way to articulate these issues to
minimize the risk of frustration and, therefore, it is vital to have a clear strategy as well as a
marketing plan. The marketing plan as such is helpful for any kind of companies, specifically for
managers or the companys leader (Ferrell, Hartline, & Lucas, 2002)
Being that marketing is linked to a changing environment (Rivera & De Garcilln, 2012),
which is continually providing new challenges to companies; it requires that both the tasks to be
performed by the market as the importance attached to each will be different, in a process of
continuous adjustment. That is why the marketing plan seeks to collect the most relevant

historical information regarding the products, markets, competitors and customers (Cohen, 2005),
where it is analyzed the current situation of the company in relation to competitors and in
different markets.
Moreover, typically, the final stage of any marketing planning process is to establish
targets, meaning quantities and timescales, to monitor the progress (Drummond, & Ensor, 2001).
Once the plan would be implemented and the product or service would be launched, this set of
targets will help the company to know how many of those were accomplished and how many do
not. After that, the firm can evaluate what did they did wrong in the marketing plan and then take
the necessary actions to make it better and as a consequence the launching of the new product or
service will be successful this time.
In addition, when a firm wants to launch a new product or service, obviously it is
expected to have people that buy that product, clients, and to gain clients it has to be
communicate to the public that there is being offer a product or service. As Jain, & Haley (2010)
indicated a marketing plan is about planning how to conduct an effective communication from
the firm to the public and ensuring that they become a client one they know the benefits they can
get whether they buy the product or service.
What it is more, although there is a good number of companies which have defined its
objectives, since it is known that having defined it is essential to the own company survival
(Heracleous, 2003), few of them have not very clear how they think they will achieve those,
meaning the strategies and actions. By making a marketing plan companies are able to establish
those necessary strategies as well as the methodology, tools and marketing techniques, that will
led them to achieve not only its quantitative objectives but also the qualitative ones or at least to

approach them in a best way (Kotler, 2005). Otherwise, companies will embark on adventures in
which they will not know the final and it will cost them financial and human resources.
Additionally, knowing that the key factors that affect any business model are: (a) the
environment in which a firm operates; (b) competence; (c) client or target audience; (c) product
or service per se; (d) price; (e) distribution; (f) commercialization; (g) promotion and
communication; (h) sales and revenues; (i) costs (Heracleous, 2003); it can be said that these
factors are closely related to the elements that a marketing plan comprises in a much more
detailed way.
Then, according to Larimer (2010) a marketing plan shows not only the market potential
and the companys which is making it, in that specific market; but also it defines the objectives
and goals that are wanted to be achieved, the strategies and policies, the exact programming of
resources that will be used, times, amounts, functional and operational responsibilities; the
establishment of budgets and sales forecasts, as well as methods and systems for monitoring,
evaluation and control of business action and the marketing function of the company. All of
which are thought to evaluate the feasibility of the new product or service that the company
desired to launch since it points out what are the companys strengths and weaknesses to diminish
the latter and enhance the former; it proposes economic scenarios of expenditures, revenues and
profits which is a key part in the decision-making process of any company, because any of them
want to waste resources and money in something that will not even return them their investment.
Furthermore, a marketing plan has marketing research as part of its structure.
Nevertheless, marketing research is not only about develop a questionnaire and apply it to your
thought target customers, nor just make a focus group and let people talk about your product or
service, those are only instruments. The fundamental part of marketing research is to process the

information that you gather when applying those instruments as well as analyze the data,
comments and results, and therefore, understand who your potential customer is?, what do they
want and need?, how many people will buy your product? how do they behave with products or
services like yours, are they fully satisfied with existing products?, what are the key elements that
they value the most of your product, how much they are willing to pay for it so you can put a
price within their expectations, and so on (Kotler, Lane, Cmara, & Moll, 2006). This will give a
firm a foundation of how came with the adequate decisions. Hence, companies that are not aware
of this, they just will launch a product based on another people research and interpretation, or will
just launch the product without any marketing research instead only based on its intuition, field
experience, trends, but nothing with the enough support to even think that the product or service
launch will be successful and sustainable.
It is also worth mentioning that a marketing plan has several benefits that supports the
importance of it to evaluate the feasibility of a new product or service launch. Here are the most
important ones: (a) denote the business growth path; (b) it serves as a guidance and analytic
element of the deviations to take immediately corrective actions; (c) encourages the participation
and cooperative work; (d) set deadlines, schedule, programs and responsibilities; and (e) set out
the systems and control methods which helps to the drive and collaborative support of the entire
firm (Hiebing, & Cooper, 2005).
On the one hand, a marketing plan serves as a guidance for the company that is launching
a new product or service since: (a) it translates the organizational objectives in the 4Ps (for
products) or 7Ps (for services) objectives; (b) it specifies the actions in those 4Ps or 7Ps so as to
achieve the established objectives; (c) economically assess the expected results and it also
prepares contingency plans (Luther, 2001). On the other hand, it has both strategic benefits and

operational. (a) strategic benefits: directs the strategic decisions impact, being that it helps to
confirm whether it was defined correctly the existing and potential competitors as well as the
strategies to face them; reduces the advertising and employees controls costs, meaning that it
helps to gain a strong positioning in both side internally and externally; (b) operational benefits:
coordinates the job of marketing and other areas; serves as a tool that aids in the organization
endeavors planning due to the marketing actions requires production, finance, accountability and
systems inputs to support the commercialization process. (Kotler, Amstrong, Saunders, & Wong,
2000).
Moreover, as an example to have a clear view of how a marketing plan is beneficial for a
firm when launching a product or service Coomasaru, Day & Lee (1996) developed a case study
in the form of a marketing plan, which focused on the proposed launch of a new product,
Lemonhead, into the existing alcoholic lemon drink market. After developing de whole plan, they
came to a number of conclusions regarding what they did. Through the marketing plan, firstly, the
firm could identify that there was a genuine demand for the launch of Lemonhead into the
existing alcoholic lemon drink market. Secondly, using the information gathered from their
empirical research, they were able to produce a product that satisfies that need. Then, the firms
strategy for launch and growth was based on their target market's requirements and a more longterm view and after initial entry into the market, they gained the second position within six
months and realistically challenged the brand leader within 12 months later of the launch. All of
this was possible due to they were consistently satisfying the needs, previously identified in the
marketing plan research, of their consumer among all elements of the marketing mix. Therefore,
their goals had been achieved and they realized that they could even go beyond the leader.

To conclude, as it has been shown throughout the development of this essay, having a
marketing plan is necessary for any firm to evaluate the marketing feasibility of a new product or
service launch, since such a plan approaches the key factors that affect any business model in a
very detailed way that at the end allows the company to arrive to informed and adequate
marketing decisions, such as what and how many will be the distribution and communication
channels, what type of advertising strategy will need the firm (pull or push), what specific
features does the product or service require to satisfy the customers needs, among other key
decisions; to have a successfully product or service launch so there is not any waste, needless
duplication or irrelevant noise that can actually serve to distract your customer instead of drive
them to you.

References
American Association of Marketing. Dictionary. Retrieved 23th, September 2015, from
https://www.ama.org/resources/Pages/Dictionary.aspx?dLetter=M
Cohen, W.A. (2005). The marketing plan (5th ed.). Wiley Publications.
Coomasaru, C., Day, J., & Lee, S. (1996). Developing a marketing plan for
lemonhead. Management Decision, 34(8), 17-24. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/212089962?accountid=28391

Drummond, G., & Ensor, J. (2001). Strategic Marketing Planning and Control (2nd ed.).
Buuterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
Ferrell, O.C., Hartline, M.D., & Lucas, G.H., Jr. (2002). Marketing Strategy (2nd ed.). Thomson
South Western, Bangalore.
Heracleous, L. (2003). Strategy and Organization. Cambridge University Press, 78-84.
Hiebing, R., & Cooper, S. (2005). The successful marketing plan (3rd ed.). MacGraw-Hill
Profesional.
Jain, S.C., & Haley, G.T. (2010). Marketing: Planning and strategy (8th ed.). Cengage.
Kotler, P. (1988). Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning & Control. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Kotler, P. (2005). Marketing Management (11th ed.). New Delhi: Pearson Education.
Kotler, P., Keller, K., Cunningham, H., & Sivaramakrishnan, S. (2012). Marketing Management
(14th ed.). Pearson Education.

Kotler, P.; Amstrong, G.; Saunders, J. & Wong, V. (2000). Introduccin al Marketing [Marketing
introduction] (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall International.
Kotler, P.; Lane, K.; Cmara, D. & Moll, A. (2006). Direccin de Marketing [Marketing
Management] (12th ed.). Madrid, Espaa: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Larimer, R. (2010). Commentary: The importance of planning your marketing. The Colorado
Springs Business Journal (Pre- June 2, 2012), Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/224576444?accountid=28391
Luther, W. M. (2001). Marketing Plan: How to prepare and implement it (3rd Edition). New
York, NY: AMACOM Books. Retrieved from
http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxybib.pucp.edu.pe:2048/lib/bibpucp/detail.action?
docID=10120161&token=2f29686c-435b-4608-8e90-172477663889

Rivera, J., & De Garcilln, M. (2012). Direccin de marketing. Fundamentos y aplicaciones

[Marketing Management. Foundations and applications] (3rd ed.). Madrid, Spain: ESIC.
Retrieved from https://books.google.es/books?hl=es&lr=&id=xL1OrX6RoIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA17&dq=importancia+del+plan+de+marketing&ots=cPDePzU
k2X&sig=tDEvR4O8I98cH03UdjwQ9M_XqJU#v=onepage&q=importancia%20del
%20plan%20de%20marketing&f=false

Soni, A., & Cohen, H. (2004). Successfully launching your product: getting it right. Handbook of
Business Strategy, 5(1), 263 268. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10775730410493955