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There are many challenges facing senior marketing people, and this commentary paper, based on the author’s consultancy experience, teaching expertise and observations of the business-to-business (B2B) environment, aims to address the causal relationship between marketing expenditure and results, which is holding back marketers from inclusion in the boardroom.

This paper includes a contextual analysis with questions and answers, giving supporting examples and facts.

B2B marketers have work extensively to earn a place in the boardroom. The author remains optimistic that given the increasing number of chartered marketers (marketing executives qualified to practice via the Chartered Institute of Marketing) and marketing MSc programmes, B2B marketers will eventually earn the right become the main drivers of corporate strategy, as is the case in the best companies in the world.

The paper brings valuable insight into enhancing marketing accountability and to provide a better position to marketers in the boardroom.

The objective of this short research-informed, practitioner-orientated paper is to provide a viewpoint on interactive marketing pre and post COVID-19.

This is a conceptual article designed to articulate a viewpoint that despite COVID-19 the strategic considerations that marketers need to make remain unchanged.

As a result of the pandemic, there is much more obvious use of interactivity in other, aligned functions such as sales and customer services. The effectiveness of interactive marketing will only be increased by having focus on the fundamental roles of the marketing discipline, strategy and segmentation, and understanding customers at the individual level. We also need reminding briefly that the rules of competition had changed well before the COVID-19 pandemic. The traditional make and sell model has been substantially replaced by new technology-enabled organisations without the restrictions of high fixed costs and cloying bureaucracy. Customers can now search for and evaluate products and services independent of suppliers and now have as much information about suppliers as suppliers have of customers. This is the backcloth against which marketers face the challenges at the beginning of 2021. We conclude that there is a great future ahead. There is no reason why the best of interactive marketing will not be capable of building relationships that are great for customers, great for the people who create them, great for all stakeholders and great for the environment.

This is a practitioner viewpoint outlining the view that COVID-19 has not had as great of an impact on interactive marketing practice as technological change has and that interactive marketing will continue to develop after COVID-19 has receded.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000002507. When citing the article, please cite: Malcolm H.B. McDonald, (1990) “Ten Barriers to Marketing Planning”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 4 Iss: 2, pp. 5 - 18.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000002507. When citing the article, please cite: Malcolm H.B. McDonald, (1990) “Ten Barriers to Marketing Planning”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 4 Iss: 2, pp. 5 - 18.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000002507. When citing the article, please cite: Malcolm H.B. McDonald, (1990) “Ten Barriers to Marketing Planning”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 4 Iss: 2, pp. 5 - 18.

One of the most successful residential business courses at the Cranfield School of Management, Marketing Plans — How to Prepare Them: How to Use Them, is now available for private study. Video recordings and other distance learning techniques developed over a period of five years and field‐tested in a number of countries are incorporated in this course, the first of a series, to be converted into self‐instructional packages by Dr Malcolm McDonald, author of the course and Cranfield Marketing Director, in association with Bell & Howell. Supplied in an attaché case, Marketing Plans consists of a comprehensive textbook, a sequence of 12 question‐and‐answer workbooks, and 12 related video programmes on cassettes. There is also an optional tutor's guide, written to help managers use the package for training their own marketing personnel. The average time needed for completion is said to be 60 hours.

Strategic marketing planning has never been the simple, step‐by‐step approach described so prolifically in prescriptive texts and courses. Reviews strategic marketing planning in the context of different modes of strategic planning. Defines strategic marketing planning, examines its role in an organization, reviews some of the techniques used in the process and concludes by exploring some of the principal barriers which hamper the introduction of strategic marketing planning, or serve to reduce its effectiveness.

Are nations successful because of their national characteristics or because of the characteristics of the companies located there? The subject is discussed in a new book review. Secondly, an article is reviewed, offering a number of research propositions, which ideally should be observed if an organisation is to gain competitive superiority and a third review focuses on marketing planning, in which theoretical planning tools are shown actually to work in practice (i.e. from concept to operation).

The literature has for more than two decades warned of operational, organizational, dysfunctional, market and managerial barriers hindering the actioning of marketing plans and indeed acting as hurdles impeding the very activities at the heart of effective marketing management. Many observed problems stemmed from businesses failing to practice marketing or produce marketing plans. Most organizations do now produce marketing plans. However, it is clear from this study’s findings that there is still a significant set of factors acting to impede the progress of marketing planning. Many of these barriers are different in nature to those previously cited. Certain themes link with the growing literature examining internal and relationship marketing. Exponents of marketing planning must reflect this evolving pattern of hurdles in their approach to expediting marketing planning.

After nearly a quarter of a century, Artificial Intelligence, in spite of all its promise, has made virtually no progress in the domain of marketing, and whilst most interested parties view it as a potentially powerful way of beating the competition, there are few products and no on‐line systems available. This article explores why progress has been slow in the domain of marketing and describes the experience and progress of a group of major British multinational companies that have joined forces to produce an Expert Marketing Planning System, EXMAR, with the author of this article as principal expert. A number of conclusions are drawn, but one of the main ones is that the development of EXMAR shows that it is possible to use Expert System methodologies to build support systems in complex areas of marketing management, especially if the domain is well defined, has a large number of factors to be considered, and relevant expert knowledge is available. Also Expert Systems are shown as being useful in helping both academics and practitioners to structure, validate and use marketing knowledge and to understand better the interrelationships between the elements of marketing. In particular, the article forces managers to think deeply and in a structured way about the issues that need to be considered in developing a strategic marketing plan.