| Summary: | The purpose of this paper is to explore the foundations of SMP process in the LCBs being adopted in 2007. An interpretive approach was chosen to address the research questions posed. In order to address the research objectives the survey strategy has chosen to answer the research questions. The triangulation of qualitative, quantitative techniques and archival data suggested by the interpretive philosophy and deductive approach is used for the reasons given above. The descriptive statistic analysis is used to analyse the structured questionnaires, and the pattern matching and coding analysis is utilised in order to analyse the semi-structured interviews. The major findings in this research are: comprehensive strategic plans are in place, but that the processes by which they are created have significant limitations. In addition, SMP in the LCBs is still evolving and that it is, currently, in growth. In terms of marketing lifecycle, marketing in LCBs is in its infancy stage, it was found, contrary to expectations that marketing departments have only been established recently. For this reason a number of barriers to SMP were found.
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