rsonnel responsible for implementing them, and how they will be determined to have been completed (60). Marketing plans may be for the short-term or the long-term; some are put in place for intermediate amounts of time in order to help the company achieve its long-term goals. Strategic plans depend on organizational missions to define the overall environment and determine what business the company is in, then proceed to very specific components, including establishing strategic business units, setting objectives, analyzing the firm's situations, and developing the marketing strategy to respond to that situation (70).
Such plans are not developed without extensive research on the part of the company. This research can be gained from analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the company, as well as the opportunities and threats that face the organization (93). Companies may also use a marketing information system which automates the collection and storage of information that is used in the marketing function. The fundamental factor in the marketing information system is the marketing intelligence network. This consists of continuous monitoring, marketing research and data storage (95). Marketing research itself is the gather, recording and analyzing of data about marketing issues, and is usually conducted on both an internal and external basis (101).
With the amount of resources that are poured into various companies' marketing efforts, it is no wonder that marketing has a strong effect on society. These effects can stretch into quality of life and consumer expectation issues. There is, therefore, some amount of social responsibility associated with marketing that requires that companies balance the adverse effects of manufacturing or producing a product or service with the beneficial effects to society (133). This is the basis for ethics in marketing, which is based on honest behavior and which can be described as either ...