Marketing Strategy, Planning, and Control

Introduction

Marketing management becomes strategic when it connects an organisation’s purpose and market opportunities with coordinated choices about customers, value propositions, competitive position, resources, implementation, and performance. A marketing plan is therefore more than a promotional calendar. It is a managerial system for deciding where the organisation will compete, how it will create and capture value, what resources are required, who is accountable, and how learning will lead to corrective action.

For entrepreneurs, strategic marketing is particularly important because resources are scarce, uncertainty is high, and early decisions can establish a venture’s reputation and cost structure. An attractive product does not guarantee commercial success. Sustainable performance depends on selecting a viable market, understanding customer problems, differentiating meaningfully, allocating resources deliberately, executing consistently, and adapting as evidence changes.

This chapter develops an integrated approach to marketing strategy, planning, and control. It links environmental analysis and objectives to growth strategy, competitive positioning, budgets, implementation, organisational responsibility, risk management, measurement, and corrective action.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Distinguish marketing strategy, marketing planning, implementation, and control.
2. Analyse markets and translate organisational goals into measurable marketing objectives.
3. Apply growth and competitive-positioning frameworks appropriately.
4. Construct a coherent marketing programme and allocate resources among priorities.
5. Use budgets, metrics, dashboards, and variance analysis to control performance.
6. Identify ethical, technological, and strategic risks and recommend corrective action.
7. Prepare an integrated marketing plan for an entrepreneurial venture.

1. Strategy, Planning, Implementation, and Control

Marketing strategy is the pattern of long-term choices through which an organisation selects target markets, creates superior customer value, and seeks a defensible position relative to competitors. Marketing planning converts strategy into a structured set of objectives, actions, resources, schedules, and measures. Implementation is the execution of those decisions through people, processes, channels, technology, and partners. Marketing control compares actual performance with intended performance and initiates learning or corrective action.

These activities form a cycle rather than a one-time sequence:

1. Diagnose the environment and organisational capabilities.
2. Define customers, markets, and strategic priorities.
3. Set objectives and select strategies.
4. Design programmes and allocate resources.
5. Implement through accountable managers and processes.
6. Measure results and assumptions.
7. Correct, learn, and revise the plan.

A plan is integrated when its elements reinforce one another. For example, a premium positioning should be supported by product quality, service standards, appropriate distribution, credible communications, and sufficient investment in customer experience. A low-price strategy cannot normally rely on expensive customisation and highly fragmented distribution without explaining how the economics will work.

Strategic and operational planning

Strategic planning generally covers a longer horizon and addresses markets, competitive advantage, growth, and resource priorities. Operational planning translates these choices into campaigns, sales activities, content, channel schedules, inventory decisions, and customer-service procedures. Strategic plans without operational detail remain aspirational; operational plans without strategic direction become disconnected activity.

2. Strategic Diagnosis

External analysis

A useful diagnosis examines the macroenvironment, industry structure, customers, competitors, intermediaries, and relevant stakeholders.

• Political and legal factors: advertising rules, consumer protection, privacy, product standards, taxation, and platform regulation.
• Economic factors: income, inflation, interest rates, employment, exchange rates, and purchasing power.
• Social and cultural factors: lifestyles, demographics, values, identity, trust, and changing consumption practices.
• Technological factors: digital platforms, automation, artificial intelligence, payment systems, data infrastructure, and channel innovation.
• Environmental factors: resource scarcity, climate effects, packaging, emissions, and circular-economy expectations.

Industry analysis asks how value is created and captured. Porter’s five forces—rivalry, threat of new entrants, supplier power, buyer power, and substitutes—help managers assess structural pressure on profitability. The framework is not a numerical prediction tool; it is a disciplined way to ask why competition is intense and where strategic protection may exist.

Customer analysis should move beyond demographic description. Managers need to understand jobs to be done, pain points, desired outcomes, purchase triggers, decision criteria, barriers, willingness to pay, switching costs, and post-purchase behaviour. Evidence may come from interviews, observation, surveys, transaction data, experiments, social listening, and secondary research. Entrepreneurs should distinguish what customers say from what they actually do.

Internal analysis

Internal analysis evaluates resources and capabilities, including brand assets, customer relationships, data, intellectual property, employees, supplier access, technology, financial capacity, and organisational routines. A resource is strategically valuable when it helps exploit an opportunity or reduce a threat; it is more defensible when it is rare, difficult to imitate, and supported by the organisation.

A SWOT analysis can summarise findings, but it should not substitute for analysis. Strengths and weaknesses are internal; opportunities and threats are external. Each item should be evidence-based and connected to a decision. “Strong brand” is weak analysis unless the planner explains how brand trust affects acquisition, retention, pricing, or channel access.

3. From Mission to Marketing Objectives

Marketing objectives should support organisational objectives while remaining within marketing’s influence. Common objectives include:

• increasing qualified demand or market share;
• acquiring customers in a defined segment;
• improving retention, repeat purchase, or customer lifetime value;
• increasing awareness, consideration, preference, or trust;
• improving distribution, conversion, or service quality; and
• strengthening brand equity or strategic relationships.

Effective objectives are specific, measurable, achievable but stretching, relevant, and time-bound. They should define the measure, baseline, target, time period, market or segment, and owner. “Improve digital marketing” is not an objective. “Increase the qualified website conversion rate from 2.5% to 3.5% by the end of the second quarter while maintaining a customer acquisition cost below $30” is more useful.

Objectives should be organised hierarchically. A financial goal such as contribution growth may depend on customer outcomes such as retention and average order value, which may depend on process outcomes such as delivery reliability and campaign conversion. This logic prevents managers from optimising an isolated metric.

Useful marketing calculations

The following measures are decision aids, not complete definitions of success.

Market share is commonly calculated as:

Sales must be measured on a comparable basis, such as revenue or units, during the same period and within the same market definition.

Conversion rate is:

The denominator must be specified—for example, sessions, qualified leads, or proposals—because different denominators produce different interpretations.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is often estimated as:

The numerator should identify the period and included costs. If salaries, agency fees, discounts, and technology are excluded, the result is a partial CAC rather than a fully loaded one.

Contribution margin per unit is:

This assumes costs are classified consistently and that the relevant range is approximately linear.

When fixed costs are known and the contribution margin is positive, the unit break-even volume is:

This is applicable to a single product or a stable sales mix. It assumes fixed costs do not change within the relevant range, variable cost per unit is stable, and all produced units can be sold. It is not a forecast of demand.

Return on marketing investment (ROMI) may be expressed as:

The calculation requires an estimate of incremental, attributable contribution rather than total sales. Attribution is difficult when several activities and external factors influence results; therefore, ROMI should be interpreted with experiments, benchmarks, and sensitivity analysis.

4. Growth Strategy

Growth strategy determines how the organisation will expand value creation. The Ansoff matrix offers four broad directions:

Market penetration may involve improving availability, increasing usage, strengthening retention, or winning competitor customers. Product development uses knowledge of current customers to introduce new offerings. Market development takes an existing value proposition into new geographic, demographic, institutional, or usage markets. Diversification combines a new product with a new market and should normally require strong evidence, capabilities, and risk controls.

Growth should not be assessed only by revenue. Managers should examine contribution, cash requirements, operational capacity, service quality, brand effects, and strategic fit. Rapid customer acquisition can destroy value if CAC exceeds the future contribution generated by customers or if growth overwhelms fulfilment capability.

5. Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

Segmentation divides a heterogeneous market into groups with sufficiently similar needs or responses to justify differentiated treatment. Bases may be demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioural, firmographic, or needs-based. A useful segment is identifiable, substantial or strategically valuable, reachable, responsive, and compatible with organisational capabilities.

Targeting evaluates segments and selects those the organisation will serve. Evaluation criteria include size and growth, intensity of competition, accessibility, expected profitability, strategic fit, risk, and the organisation’s ability to deliver superior value. Entrepreneurs should avoid selecting a segment merely because it is large; a smaller segment with urgent needs and low competitive intensity may be more attractive.

Positioning is the place a brand seeks to occupy in the target customer’s mind relative to alternatives. It should clarify the target customer, category or frame of reference, distinctive benefit, reason to believe, and relevant emotional or social meaning. A positioning statement may take the form: “For [target customer], [brand] is the [category or solution] that [distinctive benefit], because [evidence].” The statement is a strategic guide, not necessarily consumer-facing copy.

Differentiation may be based on product performance, convenience, design, service, personalisation, trust, community, price-value, sustainability, or access. A difference is strategically useful only when customers value it, competitors cannot easily neutralise it, and the organisation can deliver it consistently.

6. Competitive Strategy and Value Proposition

Competitive positioning concerns how the organisation will win in a chosen market. Broad approaches include cost efficiency, differentiation, focused specialisation, or a combination appropriate to a clearly defined segment. A start-up rarely outspends established firms across all dimensions. It may instead focus on a neglected customer problem, superior speed, local knowledge, community trust, or a business model that changes the basis of competition.

The value proposition connects customer problem, proposed solution, benefits, sacrifices, and evidence. Benefits should be expressed in customer outcomes rather than internal features. “Cloud-based dashboard” is a feature; “reduces weekly reporting time by two hours” is a possible outcome. Claims must be credible, testable, and legally supportable.

A positioning map can stimulate discussion, but it is not automatically empirical. If axes such as price and convenience are chosen without customer research, the map may reflect managerial assumptions rather than market perception.

7. Designing the Integrated Marketing Programme

The marketing mix must express the strategy consistently.

• Product: core benefit, features, quality, design, brand, packaging, service, warranties, and product-line decisions.
• Price: list price, discounts, payment terms, bundling, dynamic pricing, and perceived value. Price should reflect costs, customer value, competitive context, and strategic objectives.
• Place: direct and indirect channels, geographic coverage, availability, logistics, platform dependence, and channel conflict.
• Promotion: advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling, content, social media, events, influencer activity, and customer communication.
• People, process, and physical evidence: especially important in services, where employees, delivery procedures, interfaces, facilities, and proof of quality shape the experience.

Integration does not mean using every channel. It means that selected touchpoints work toward the same positioning and customer journey. A channel plan should specify the role of each channel: awareness, evaluation, conversion, delivery, retention, or advocacy.

A customer journey identifies stages such as need recognition, search, evaluation, purchase, use, support, and loyalty. At each stage, the plan should identify customer questions, friction, responsible owner, communication, technology, and measure.

8. Resource Allocation and Budgeting

Resource allocation converts priorities into financial, human, technological, and managerial commitments. Common budgeting approaches include:

1. Objective-and-task: define objectives, list tasks, estimate costs, and aggregate the budget. This is strategically transparent.
2. Percentage of sales: simple but potentially circular; it may reduce investment precisely when growth requires it.
3. Competitive parity: uses competitors as a reference but assumes their strategy and resources are appropriate.
4. Affordable method: spends what remains after other costs, which may underfund strategic priorities.
5. Zero-based or portfolio budgeting: requires each activity to justify its expected contribution and risk.

Objective-and-task budgeting is generally preferable for strategic planning, although practical constraints must be acknowledged. Budgets should include implementation costs, creative and media costs, personnel, research, technology, training, agency fees, fulfilment effects, and contingency reserves where appropriate.

Worked example: campaign economics

An entrepreneur sells a subscription product for $50 per month. Variable fulfilment cost is $20 per subscriber per month, giving a contribution margin of $30 per month. A campaign costs $12,000 and is expected to acquire 500 additional subscribers. The first-month contribution is 500 × $30 = $15,000. The campaign therefore generates $3,000 of first-month incremental contribution before other attributable costs, and its first-month ROMI is:

The implied CAC is $12,000 ÷ 500 = $24 per subscriber. This example does not prove long-term profitability. It excludes retention, churn, service costs, cannibalisation, timing, and attribution uncertainty. If the average subscriber remains for several months, later contribution may improve the economics; if many cancel immediately, it may worsen them.

9. Implementation and Organisational Responsibility

Implementation fails when responsibility is vague. A practical plan assigns each action an accountable owner, supporting contributors, deadline, required resources, dependencies, and success measure. A RACI matrix can distinguish who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. One person should normally be accountable for a deliverable, even when several people contribute.

Implementation also requires capabilities. These may include market research, creative production, sales enablement, data analysis, customer service, fulfilment, compliance, and partnership management. The marketing function cannot deliver a promise that operations cannot fulfil. Cross-functional coordination is therefore essential.

A useful implementation schedule identifies:

• major workstreams and milestones;
• critical dependencies;
• decision gates and approval rights;
• staffing and skills;
• technology and data requirements;
• supplier and agency responsibilities;
• training and internal communication; and
• escalation procedures.

Entrepreneurial ventures often use agile experimentation: formulate a hypothesis, run a controlled test, measure a meaningful outcome, learn, and scale or stop. Agile activity should not become random experimentation; tests must remain connected to strategic objectives and customer value.

10. Performance Measurement and Control

Marketing control operates at several levels.

A dashboard should contain a limited set of decision-relevant indicators. Measures can be classified as:

• Input measures: expenditure, staffing, inventory, content volume.
• Activity measures: impressions, contacts, calls, visits, demonstrations.
• Outcome measures: sales, margin, retention, satisfaction, market share.
• Leading indicators: engagement, qualified pipeline, trial use, repeat intent.
• Lagging indicators: revenue, profit, churn, realised share.

Vanity metrics, such as raw impressions without audience quality or business relevance, can mislead. Managers should examine definitions, data quality, attribution, time lags, comparison groups, and unintended effects.

Variance analysis and corrective action

A simple budget variance is:

For expenditure, a positive variance may mean overspending; for contribution, a positive variance may be favourable. Therefore, the report must state whether higher or lower values are desirable. Percentage variance is:

This measure is undefined when the budget is zero and can be unstable when the budget is very small. A variance should lead to diagnosis, not automatic blame. Managers should ask whether it arose from volume, price, mix, timing, execution, measurement error, competitor action, or an invalid assumption.

Corrective actions may include reallocating budget, changing the offer, revising creative, improving landing-page experience, retraining sales staff, adjusting channel mix, narrowing the target segment, renegotiating supplier terms, or discontinuing an activity. Corrective action should specify the expected effect, owner, deadline, and follow-up measure.

11. Risk, Ethics, and Governance

Marketing risk includes demand uncertainty, competitive imitation, channel dependence, price pressure, supply disruption, reputational damage, cybersecurity, privacy breaches, regulatory penalties, misleading claims, and operational inability to deliver the promise. A risk register should record the risk, cause, probability, impact, early warning indicator, mitigation, contingency, owner, and review date.

Ethical marketing requires truthful communication, fair pricing, respect for autonomy, protection of vulnerable customers, responsible use of personal data, accessibility, and avoidance of discriminatory targeting. Consent should be meaningful rather than hidden in confusing interfaces. Personalisation must not become manipulation, surveillance, or unfair exclusion.

Regulatory requirements vary by jurisdiction, but common areas include consumer protection, data privacy, email and telemarketing rules, intellectual property, competition law, product claims, advertising disclosure, and sector-specific standards. Managers should involve legal and compliance specialists where claims, sensitive data, children, health, finance, or regulated products are involved.

Artificial intelligence can support segmentation, forecasting, content adaptation, customer service, and experimentation. However, AI-generated outputs may contain errors, biased recommendations, fabricated evidence, privacy violations, or unexplained decisions. Governance should include data provenance, human review, access control, testing for bias, disclosure where appropriate, documentation, and a process for correcting harmful outcomes. AI should augment managerial judgement rather than replace accountability.

12. Contemporary Developments

Several developments are reshaping strategic marketing:

• First-party data and consent-based relationships: privacy changes and platform restrictions increase the value of direct, permission-based customer relationships.
• Omnichannel experience: customers move among physical, digital, social, mobile, and service channels; inconsistency creates friction.
• Community and creator economies: trust may be built through communities and credible creators rather than mass advertising alone.
• Sustainability and responsible consumption: environmental claims must be specific, evidenced, and not misleading.
• Revenue and retention models: subscriptions and platforms make churn, usage, onboarding, and lifetime economics central.
• Experimentation and analytics: rapid testing improves learning, but correlation should not be mistaken for causation.

These developments increase the importance of capability building, data governance, organisational coordination, and strategic clarity.

13. Illustrative Case: GreenBite Urban Meals

Background

GreenBite is a fictional early-stage venture offering plant-forward prepared meals delivered to university students and young professionals. Its meals use recyclable packaging and are priced above mass-market fast food but below premium restaurant delivery.

Problem

After six months, GreenBite had growing awareness but inconsistent repeat purchase. The founders were spending equally on social media, discount codes, campus events, and paid search without a clear segment or performance logic. Cash was limited, and delivery delays were damaging reviews.

Analysis

Customer interviews and order data revealed two distinct groups: occasional environmentally conscious purchasers and time-poor postgraduate students who valued reliable, nutritious meals. The second group ordered more frequently, complained less about price, and responded strongly to predictable delivery windows. Competitors were numerous, but few offered a weekly plan designed around campus schedules.

The internal analysis identified strengths in menu flexibility and local supplier relationships, but weaknesses in delivery capacity, retention measurement, and message consistency. The critical strategic issue was not simply awareness; it was selecting a segment for which GreenBite could deliver distinctive value profitably.

Approach and solution

GreenBite selected time-poor postgraduate students in two campuses as its initial target. Its positioning became: a reliable, nutritious weekly meal service that fits postgraduate schedules. The plan included:

• a weekly subscription with pause and skip options;
• delivery windows aligned with evening study periods;
• a simplified menu to improve fulfilment reliability;
• campus ambassadors recruited from the target segment;
• referral credits rather than indiscriminate discounts;
• email and app reminders based on consent;
• a dashboard tracking trial, second order, subscription retention, delivery reliability, contribution, and complaints;
• an operations owner accountable for delivery performance and a marketing owner accountable for qualified acquisition and retention coordination.

The budget shifted from equal channel spending to objective-and-task allocation. A small reserve funded delivery problem resolution and controlled experiments. Campaign decisions were gated: acquisition spending could increase only if delivery reliability and second-order rate met defined thresholds.

Outcome

In the illustrative scenario, the first eight-week pilot produced fewer new customers than the previous broad campaign but increased second-order rate and reduced complaints. Contribution per acquired customer improved because fewer discounts were used and repeat purchase increased. The team did not declare final success from one pilot; it continued monitoring seasonality, capacity, customer mix, and whether the positioning remained distinctive.

Learning points

1. Strategic focus can reduce volume while improving economic quality.
2. Marketing promises must be supported by operations.
3. Retention and contribution may be more informative than reach alone.
4. Budget allocation should follow objectives and evidence.
5. Control systems should include stop, continue, and scale decisions.

Challenges and Limitations

No planning framework eliminates uncertainty. Market research may be biased, customer preferences may change, competitor responses may be rapid, and attribution may remain imperfect. Forecasts are conditional statements, not facts. Quantitative metrics can encourage short-term optimisation at the expense of brand, trust, employee wellbeing, or long-term innovation. Strategic frameworks such as SWOT, Ansoff, and the five forces simplify reality and should be combined with judgement and evidence.

A further limitation is organisational politics. Departments may protect budgets, disagree about definitions, or reward local performance rather than total customer value. Clear governance, shared metrics, transparent assumptions, and senior sponsorship are necessary to manage these tensions.

Best-Practice Checklist

A high-quality integrated marketing plan should:

• begin with evidence about customers, competitors, context, and capabilities;
• define a specific target and a credible, differentiated value proposition;
• connect marketing objectives to organisational outcomes;
• state assumptions, risks, dependencies, and decision rules;
• align product, price, place, promotion, service, and operations;
• allocate resources by expected contribution and strategic importance;
• assign accountable owners and implementation milestones;
• use a balanced dashboard of leading and lagging indicators;
• distinguish activity, attribution, and business outcomes;
• review ethical, legal, privacy, and sustainability implications; and
• treat control as learning and corrective action rather than merely reporting.

Chapter Summary

Marketing strategy establishes where an organisation will compete, whom it will serve, how it will create superior value, and how it will build a defensible position. Marketing planning translates those choices into objectives, programmes, budgets, responsibilities, schedules, and measures. Effective plans integrate diagnosis, segmentation, targeting, positioning, growth strategy, the marketing mix, resource allocation, and operational capability.

Control completes the process. Managers compare actual and planned results, interpret variances, test assumptions, manage risk, and take corrective action. Measures should include customer, financial, process, and learning indicators; no single metric is sufficient. Entrepreneurs must also address privacy, truthful claims, fairness, sustainability, data governance, and responsible use of AI. The central principle is coherence: promises, resources, people, processes, channels, and measures must support the same strategic intent.

Key Terms

Marketing strategy: Long-term choices about markets, customers, value creation, and competitive position.

Marketing plan: A structured statement of objectives, strategies, actions, resources, schedules, and measures.

Marketing implementation: Execution of marketing decisions through people, processes, channels, and technology.

Marketing control: Measurement, comparison, diagnosis, learning, and corrective action.

Market segmentation: Division of a market into groups with similar needs or responses.

Targeting: Evaluation and selection of segments to serve.

Positioning: The intended place of a brand relative to alternatives in target customers’ perceptions.

Value proposition: The promised customer benefits and supporting evidence relative to sacrifices.

Competitive advantage: A value-creating position that competitors cannot easily replicate or neutralise.

Market penetration: Growth through existing products in existing markets.

Market development: Growth through existing products in new markets.

Product development: Growth through new products in existing markets.

Diversification: Growth through new products in new markets.

Contribution margin: Selling price minus variable cost, per unit or in total.

Customer acquisition cost: Attributable acquisition expenditure divided by new customers acquired.

ROMI: Incremental contribution relative to marketing investment.

Leading indicator: A measure that may signal future performance.

Lagging indicator: A measure of an outcome that has already occurred.

Variance analysis: Comparison and diagnosis of actual results against planned results.

Marketing governance: Structures and rules that guide accountability, ethics, data, compliance, and decision-making.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. Distinguish marketing strategy from marketing planning and marketing control.
2. What makes a marketing objective measurable and strategically useful?
3. Explain the difference between market penetration and market development.
4. Why must a positioning claim be supported by organisational capabilities?
5. What is the purpose of a RACI matrix in marketing implementation?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how environmental and internal analysis should influence segmentation, targeting, and positioning decisions.
2. Compare the four growth directions in the Ansoff matrix and discuss the risks associated with each.
3. Discuss the strengths and limitations of objective-and-task, percentage-of-sales, competitive-parity, and affordable budgeting.
4. Explain how a marketing dashboard can combine leading, lagging, financial, customer, and process indicators.
5. Discuss the ethical and governance issues involved in using personal data and artificial intelligence in marketing.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A venture has strong awareness but low repeat purchase and rising complaints. Design a diagnostic process that distinguishes problems of targeting, value proposition, product experience, and fulfilment.
2. Prepare an integrated marketing plan outline for a local entrepreneurial business, including objectives, target segment, positioning, growth strategy, budget logic, owners, risks, and control measures.
3. A campaign exceeds its spending budget but also exceeds its sales target. Explain why the result cannot be judged from expenditure variance alone and identify the additional evidence required before reallocating or expanding the campaign.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best distinguishes marketing strategy from marketing implementation?

A. Strategy concerns long-term choices about markets and competitive value; implementation concerns executing those choices.

B. Strategy is limited to advertising; implementation is limited to pricing.

C. Strategy measures variance; implementation prepares financial statements.

D. Strategy occurs only after a campaign; implementation occurs before objectives are set.

Correct Answer: A. Strategy concerns long-term choices about markets and competitive value; implementation concerns executing those choices.

Question 2

A company sells a product for $80 and has a variable cost of $50 per unit. What is its contribution margin per unit?

A. $30

B. $50

C. $80

D. $130

Correct Answer: A. $30

Question 3

Which Ansoff growth direction combines a new product with a new market?

A. Market penetration

B. Product development

C. Market development

D. Diversification

Correct Answer: D. Diversification

Question 4

Which denominator is most appropriate for calculating a qualified-lead conversion rate?

A. Total annual revenue

B. Number of qualified leads or opportunities entering the defined process

C. Total employees

D. Competitor advertising expenditure

Correct Answer: B. Number of qualified leads or opportunities entering the defined process

Question 5

Why is a smaller, narrowly defined segment sometimes attractive to an entrepreneurial venture?

A. It always has the largest total market size.

B. It may have urgent needs and lower competitive intensity that match the venture’s capabilities.

C. It eliminates the need for customer research.

D. It guarantees that competitors cannot enter.

Correct Answer: B. It may have urgent needs and lower competitive intensity that match the venture’s capabilities.

Question 6

A campaign costs $10,000 and produces $14,000 of attributable incremental contribution. What is ROMI under the chapter’s formula?

A. 4%

B. 14%

C. 40%

D. 71.4%

Correct Answer: C. 40%

Question 7

Which control type asks whether the organisation’s chosen strategy remains appropriate as the environment changes?

A. Strategic control

B. Payroll control

C. Inventory control only

D. Creative control only

Correct Answer: A. Strategic control

Question 8

What is the principal purpose of variance analysis?

A. To punish the department with the largest numerical difference

B. To compare actual and planned results and diagnose causes for action

C. To replace all market research

D. To ensure every budget is spent completely

Correct Answer: B. To compare actual and planned results and diagnose causes for action

Question 9

Which practice best supports responsible use of AI in marketing?

A. Allowing automated outputs to make all customer decisions without review

B. Using personal data without consent when targeting efficiency improves

C. Maintaining human oversight, documenting data sources, and testing for bias and error

D. Hiding all automated communication from customers

Correct Answer: C. Maintaining human oversight, documenting data sources, and testing for bias and error

Question 10

Which statement about break-even units is correct?

A. It equals fixed costs divided by selling price, regardless of variable costs.

B. It applies without assumptions to any product portfolio and sales mix.

C. It equals fixed costs divided by contribution margin per unit when the relevant assumptions hold.

D. It measures the number of customers required to achieve market leadership.

Correct Answer: C. It equals fixed costs divided by contribution margin per unit when the relevant assumptions hold.