Mission in Planning

The mission is the very reason and justification for the existence of a firm. Mission is always defined in terms of the benefits the firm provides to its customers and not in terms of any physical dimensions of the firm or its products.

A firm exists and functions only in relation to the customer whose need (s) it satisfies. For example if there were no guests to stay there would be no hotels or if there are no tourists there would be no tour operator or travel agency. Thus the starting point for defining the mission of any business is its customer. Since the customer exists outside the business, the mission must be defined from the outside. The firm must ask the questions like “What is our business?” and “What should it be?” However, the firm must seek-the answers to these questions from the customer's viewpoint.

The important thing is to identify the no-so-obvious, but the perceived benefit or value which the customer is actually seeking when buying the product. Correct identification of the real benefit or value to the customer will help the firm to answer the question “What is our business?”

A travel agency may view its business as merely selling air tickets, but the customers buying these may in reality be buying convenience, luxury travel, status or any other value they perceive in air travel.

Further, mission is always concerned with the future. “What should our business be?” The mission should be so described that it remains valid for at least some years to come. Sometimes the mission may be so intelligently described, anticipating future opportunities so well, that the concept may remain valid for even as long as 15 to 20 years. For example a tour operation firm may define its mission as “bringing the tourists dreams into reality.”

However long a mission may remain valid without any change, it must be noted that the concept of mission is dynamic and not static. It must change over time with changes occurring in the environment like changes in technology, social structure, tourism trends, tastes, fashion, etc. A firm which wants to grow and ensure its future must keep pace with these environmental changes and, if need be, accordingly changes its definition of business. But the critical factor which the firm must remember is that its future is determined by the way it defined its business today. There can be many descriptions of the business mission and there is no one right or correct answers. The firm has to make a choice as to how it wants to define what is its business. Making a choice is never easy. It involves examining and evaluating the various alternatives available and finally choosing one which is consistent with top management's perception about the benefits they are providing to the customers today and their aspirations for the future. Thus, the mission has to seek a balance between the present and the future, and avoid being defined too narrowly or too broadly.

Too narrow a definition will prevent a firm from availing many new and profitable opportunities that may come its may. For example a firm involved in distributing films for cinema theatres had defined its business as “seeking to fulfil the entertainment needs of customers through distributing films to theatres for exhibiting to actual customer”. With the increasing popularity of videos and the subsequent decrease in earnings from theatres this firm was soon faced with prospect of dwindling business. On the other hand, if the firm had defined its business as “fulfilling the entertainment needs through distributing means of audio-cum-visual entertainment”, it could have undertaken the distribution of video films along with firms and continued to grow. In this example, the key words are ‘entertainment', the specific need of the customers that the firm is seeking to fulfil, and ‘audio-cum-visual', describing the type of entertainment.

Suppose this same firm had, instead, defined its business as “distributing means of entertainment”. What would they become? The field which the firm had identified is far too broad to be meaningfully able to concentrate on any workable opportunity. Consider that books, magazines, records, music cassettes also constitute means of entertainment. For many people both indoor and outdoor games are a way of entertainment. Should this firm then include hockey sticks, badminton rackets footballs, and chess boards also?

The scope of a firm's business flows from its definition of mission but is described in more specific rather than generic terms. Scope refers to the choice of the specific products/services and markets in which a firm wishes to operate. The definition of product/market scope has a direct bearing on the subsequent decisions regarding choice of objectives and strategy.

A shipping company may describe its mission as fulfilling the transportation needs of its customers. It may, if it so chooses, further qualify the scope by defining whether the transportation is meant for goods (cargo) or for passengers or both.