Firms must continually monitor environments and make changes in their
marketing programs. The marketing management cycle involves marketing
planning, marketing execution, and marketing evaluation. This cycle is discussed
briefly in this chapter, and Chapter 5 covers the marketing planning
process in depth. To be successful in marketing planning, firms need to conduct
research and collect information that can be used to evaluate their programs.
Chapter 6 discusses the marketing research process used to gather
information to be stored in marketing information systems and used to make
marketing decisions.