Company Goals and Objectives

Company mission statement or long-term strategic vision. Concerning the company mission statement, one may appropriately quote Yogi Berra, the US famous baseball player: "If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else." Through his humorous remark was not directly related to business, it would perfectly apply to our topic. It is needless to comment on that every company needs a major strategic goal to pursuit through its whole scope of activities. Mission statement is the commonly accepted standard of defining business' long-term purpose.

Let us now go through mission statement definitions. There are a variety of them, so we shall focus on four of the most cited ones.

Enterpreneur.com defines mission statement as "A sentence describing a company's function, markets and competitive advantages; a short written statement of your business goals and philosophies".

According to BusinessDictionary.com, mission statement is a written declaration of an organization's core purpose and focus that normally remains unchanged over time.

Investopedia definition of mission statement is "a short sentence or paragraph used by a company to explain, in simple and concise terms, its purposes for being".

Finally, Wikipedia describes it as a statement of the purpose of a company, organization or person, its reason for existing.

These definitions diverge from each other in details, but ultimately they are similar in that mission statement is a description of company's purpose or goal. The idea of mission statement is to define what an organization is, why it exists, and its reason for being. Commonly, it also defines who its primary customers are, identifies the products and services business produces, and describes the geographical location in which company operate. It is not uncommon for the largest companies to spend many years and millions of dollars developing and refining their mission statement, with many of these mission statements eventually becoming household phrases.

Effective mission statements start by cogently articulating the organization's purpose of existence.

Mission statements often include the following information:

* Aim(s) of the organization

* The organization's primary stakeholders: clients/customers, shareholders, congregation, etc.

* How the organization provides value to these stakeholders, for example by offering specific types of products and/or services

* A declaration of an organization's sole core purpose. A mission statement answers the question, "Why do we exist?"

According to Bart, the commercial mission statement consists of 3 essential components:

1. Key market - who is your target client/customer? (generalize if needed)

2. Contribution - what product or service do you provide to that client?

3. Distinction - what makes your product or service unique, so that the client would choose you?

Examples of mission statements that clearly include the 3 essential components:

For example:

* McDonald's - "To provide the fast food customer food prepared in the same high-quality manner world-wide that has consistent taste, serving time, and price in a low-key décor and friendly atmosphere."

* Key Market: The fast food customer world-wide

* Contribution: tasty and reasonably-priced food prepared in a high-quality manner

* Distinction: delivered consistently (world-wide) in a low-key décor and friendly atmosphere.

* Courtyard by Marriott - "To provide economy and quality minded travelers with a premier, moderate priced lodging facility which is consistently perceived as clean, comfortable, well-maintained, and attractive, staffed by friendly, attentive and efficient people"

* Key Market: economy and quality minded travelers

* Contribution: moderate priced lodging

* Distinction: consistently perceived as clean, comfortable, well-maintained, and attractive, staffed by friendly, attentive and efficient people

Other skillfully crafted mission statements are as follows:

Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.

Starbucks: To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.

Chevron: To be the global energy company most admired for its people, partnership, and performance.

Amazon: To be the most customer-centric company in the world, where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.

Intel: Delight our customers, employees, and shareholders by relentlessly delivering the platform and technology advancements that become essential to the way we work and live.

Ebay: Provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything.

Each sample mission statement conveys the founder's core beliefs and values and therefore affects every aspect of company's business.

Company key goals and objectives. We shall now proceed to show the importance of defining company's tactical objectives within the framework of marketing plan. We accept the general point of view held by business marketers, that organization is evidently unable to determine its objectives without having a strategic vision, expressed in mission statement. Once a company has designed its mission statement, it can then develop objectives needed