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The purpose of this paper is to provide a decision support model for optimizing the composition of portfolios of market-driven academic programs, primarily in schools offering market-driven academic programs. This model seeks to maximize financial performance during a desired planning time period while also achieving targets for other non-financial dimensions of the portfolio (e.g. mission alignment, student demographics and faculty characteristics) by deciding the types of programs to be added, redesigned and/or removed for each year of the planning period.

This paper introduces an integer linear program (i.e. mathematical optimization) to describe the portfolio optimization problem. Integer linear programs are widely used for optimizing portfolios of financial and non-financial products and services in non-educational settings. Additionally, in order to use an integer linear program for the model, qualitative data must be incorporated into the quantitative model. To do so, this paper first discusses two methods of quantifying qualitative information related to market-driven program dimensions in the following section.

The paper provides empirical insights related to the impact of this model through an illustrative case from a school offering market-driven academic programs at a prestigious private university in the USA. The results of the case highlight the potential positive impact of utilizing a similar model for planning purposes. Financially, the model results in almost double financial surplus than without the model while also achieving higher scores for all non-financial dimensions measured for the portfolio analyzed.

This paper provides a unique and impactful model for decision support in strategic planning for market-driven academic programs, an area of intense discussion and focus in higher education today.

Discusses the theory of front‐ and back‐seat driving relative to customer‐driven enterprise in marketing. With deregulation and privatization picking up speed in service industries, customer service roles are vitally important. Shows that marketing must embrace new technologies alongside customer choice and marketing ideology with intelligence. Also posits requisite planning as a positive approach as involving customers in learning how to drive themselves. Describes the author′s early involvement in requisite planning at Bowater Packaging in which transformed production technology and localized competition were involved along with corporate renewal. Describes the theory behind CUSTOMDRIVE 5 and includes a model with six steps. Concludes that, if CUSTOMDRIVE 5 is understood and implemented, then marketing professionals will soon take on board the relevant message.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how warehouse management, understood as a cluster of planning and control decisions and procedures, is organized and driven by task complexity (TC) and market dynamics (MD).

A multi‐variable conceptual model is developed based on the literature and tested among 215 warehouses using a survey.

The results suggest that TC and MD are the main drivers of warehouse management, measured by planning extensiveness (PE), decision rules complexity, and control sophistication. Differences between production and distribution warehouses are found with respect to the relationship between assortment changes and PE. Furthermore, TC appears to be a main driver of the specificity of the warehouse management (information) system (WMS).

This paper is based on 215 warehouses in The Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium); future research may test the model on a different sample. More research should be conducted to further validate the measures of the core dimensions of warehouse management.

Different levels of TC and MD characterize warehouses. Such a characterization is a first step in determining generic warehouse functionalities and helping managers to decide on the best software for their warehouse operations.

The paper defines the core dimensions of warehouse management, makes them measurable, tests them and assesses how these drivers impact specificity of WMS. The paper shows that PE in production warehouses is driven by different variables than in distribution centers.

Strategic plans are developed and executed by businesses in order to chart a course toward an idealized future destination for the organization. Normally, this means aspiring to become an industry leader or niche holder by increasing market share, developing customer loyalty, penetrating new markets or some other defined goal that is ultimately premised on growth in revenue attainment. Because of the competitive nature of business and the environmental changes that have occurred and continue to occur at an increasing rate, marketing has become a key functional area within most enterprises' strategic plans. Today's strategies require the development of plans that embrace customer engagement in an effort to increase revenue. As such, marketing is fast becoming a critical functional area surrounding the development and execution of a strategic plan. Examining marketing's role in strategic planning, as well as the critical thought work conducted by marketing and sales personnel as they influence organizational cultures that are friendly to implementing competitive strategy and planning activities, is useful for libraries if they wish to engage in beneficial and viable strategic planning of their own. Unfortunately, libraries as non‐profit service organizations are rarely in a position to create revenue based strategies. Instead, libraries must focus on strategies that encourage value creation. Additionally, in the absence of a dedicated, full‐fledged marketing group within a library, it becomes vital that such non‐profit service organizations develop replacements or similar organizational analogs for integrating marketing functions while at the same time developing a marketing‐like, patron‐centered orientation and culture required for successful market‐based strategic planning. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

Informed by the two authors' combined extensive experience in both the theoretical and practical applications of sales and marketing, the paper discusses the current trends in market planning, especially those aimed at utilizing the marketing function as a critical element of strategic planning and execution.

The paper finds that libraries that engage in strategic planning can incrementally improve their chances of success during the execution of that plan if they make an effort to include the marketing process throughout the development and execution of such plans. Additionally, since marketing and its implied customer orientations provide a strong conduit to an organization's understanding of customer needs and perceptions of value, library strategic planning that incorporates traditional marketing elements and tactics like environmental scans, customer value creation and promotion of unique benefits will provide the best foundation for competitive library strategic plans.

The authors rely on their practical and theoretical experience in marketing and planning to convey a more purposeful sense of library strategic planning that includes library marketing as a required element in order to foster strategic planning success.

The paper shares specific ideas regarding the purpose, role and benefits of strategic library marketing that are connected to improving the likelihood of long term strategic planning success, especially when such plans are aimed at increasing perceptions of library value.

Editorial This special issue of Industrial Management & Data Systems is a huge departure from our usual journal/ monograph style. This is an additional issue to the year's volume — a bonus in fact.

Notes that although in recent years much has been written about the critical, if not overwhelming contribution of effective marketing planning to the achievement of competitive success, most of the literature deals with the application of marketing planning as it relates to big business. By contrast, provides an understanding of how all the key principles can be applied in the smaller business, in the form of a practical step‐by‐step framework for plan development.

The implementation of marketing among bank executives has been late and slow. In recent years, deregulation, and resultantly, a more competitive environment have motivated the retail banking industry to be exceedingly market oriented and to implement marketing more thoroughly. This study explores the implementation of marketing by various sized Indiana banks and its relation with net income levels of banks after two succeeding deregulation waves. Implications of findings for both public policy makers and bank executives are discussed.

Describes how corporations have recently decided that development of strategic planning information can be improved through the involvement of lower‐level line managers in their planning process. Proposes a practical method for organising middle‐level line managers in sequential order so as to plan efficiently. Discusses some behavioural implications are discussed.

Amid an increasingly turbulent and competitive business environment, strategic marketing plann‐ing is typically referred to as the management discipline which enables the firm to improve its competitiveness by becoming more responsive and adaptable to changing market conditions. Most of the literature, however, deals with the application of strategic marketing planning as it relates to big business. By contrast, this article provides an understanding of how all the key principles can be applied in the smaller business, in the form of a practical framework for plan development. In addition, it features a case study showing how a small UK‐based computer company used the framework to develop its marketing plan.

Qualitative information‐gathering techniques are focused on to determine whether they can be adapted or adopted to support strategic goal‐setting. Much of the literature suggests that if planning is based on information gathered and presented in a manner which managers can understand they are more likely to act on it, and, for this reason, qualitative rather than quantitative techniques are stressed here. Factors which are not amenable to numerate analysis but which are useful to the strategic planner, such as experience, judgement and intuition, are also isolated and analysed. An attempt is made to facilitate the use of qualitative data‐gathering methods and suggestions are made as to where particular techniques may prove beneficial, together with their limitations. Research, from a small (n = 20), in‐depth survey of small business owners/ managers in Canada, is included which shows that they do not use quantitative planning processes but that judgemental techniques were most widely used; in general, the less sophisticated the planning process the higher it would be ranked among the survey participants. The research from other surveys also shows that scientific mathematically based models often do not fit with small business organisational reality and that methodologies should be developed that integrate research into the decision‐making process.