Marketing managers' perceptions of the applicability of Ashridge mission model to organisations in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Mission statements are an important component of marketing audits and marketing plans. Campbell and Yeung's Ashridge mission model is one of the methodologies suggested in academic literature for use in the analysis and design of mission statements. This paper measures marketing managers' perceptions of the usefulness of the Ashridge mission model as a tool for assessing the quality of organisational mission statements in Zimbabwe. To fulfill this objective, the perceptions of a convenience sample of 25 marketing managers enrolled on a postgraduate marketing programme at a leading Zimbabwean university are gathered and content-analysed. The Ashridge mission model prescribes that an ideal mission statement should have four elements - i.e. purpose, strategy, behaviour standards and values. The study finds that nearly all the mission statements in the sample reflect the purpose and strategy elements. More than half of them are in conformity with the values component. Less than half are in compliance with the behaviour standards aspect. Although the study is exploratory in 'nature, considering the convenient nature of the sample, the practical implication of this paper is that marketing managers in Zimbabwe can draw on the Ashridge mission model to analyse existing mission statements and design new ones.