Entrepreneurial Market Strategy and Business Planning covers all the essential topics found in most planning texts, guidelines, and templates. However, it also provides insights not found in other planning texts - insights students and executives need to develop sound and convincing market strategies and business plans that enable businesses to succeed in a world that is becoming increasingly competitive. This brief book keeps the fun in planning but not by dumbing down the planning process and planning issues. Instead, it concisely lays out critical issues and affords insights into their resolution. It tells intelligent readers not only what they should look at and do, but also what they should look for and why. Rather than reducing the planning process to a mechanistic, step-by-step "how to" instructions, this text provides practical guidelines for applying strategic management and marketing concepts to business planning. This text aims to help readers identify critical issues and think about them deliberately so they can make informed, sound, defensible strategic decisions. Further, it depicts marketing and business plans as proposals that must be backed by compelling logic and coherent arguments, something that can be accomplished by making strategic decisions throughout the process.
E. K. Valentin is an Eccles Research Fellow and Professor of Marketing and Management in the John B. Goddard School of Business and Economics, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1979 and has taught M.B.A. courses in marketing and market strategy, as well as undergraduate courses in marketing, strategic management, business research, and statistics. His research has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, and more than 50 of his articles and cases have appeared in various scholarly publications. In addition to teaching, he has been active in consulting. Dr. Valentin's academic career was preceded by military service and work in the private sector. Shortly after leaving the Army, he became an electronic communications site supervisor in Thailand during the Vietnam War Era. In 1971, after earning B.S. and M.B.A. degrees from the University of Utah, he joined the Boise Cascade Corporation, then a Fortune 100 company, as an assistant to various division and corporate executives. In 1977, he joined the Morrison-Knudsen Company as a senior corporate planning analyst, but returned to Boise Cascade in 1978 until he decided to pursue a teaching career in 1982. Dr. Valentin can be reached at evalentin@weber.edu or at ekvalentin@comcast.net.
Preface Introduction to Part I Chapter 1 - Business Planning and Market Strategy in a Nutshell Chapter 2 - Market Strategy: The Business Plan's Cornerstone Chapter 3- Devising a Business Model Chapter 4 - Getting a Handle on Costs and Financial Prospects Chapter 5 - Strategic Business Planning from Top to Bottom Chapter 6 - Managing the Planning Process Introduction to Part II Chapter 7 - Creating Shareholder Value by Creating Customer Value Chapter 8 - Situation Analysis Concepts and Frameworks Chapter 9 - Reporting Situation Analyses Chapter 10 - Coping with Uncertainties Chapter 11 - Projecting Financial Results and Needs Introduction to Part III Chapter 12 - Writing and Pitching a Business Plan Chapter 13 - Raising Capital and Choosing a Business' Legal Structure Chapter 14 - Monitoring Performance Appendix: A Sample Plan for Lynn's Hair in Style Index
