Marketing practices adopted in Romanian small and medium enterprises

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the reasons why managers of small and medium enterprises in Romania consider strategic planning a corrective method for marketing actions to achieve short term objectives and not a method of planning future marketing activities to achieve long term strategic objectives. Methodology/approach - To identify the reasons, a qualitative study was conducted using an online questionnaire and face to face meetings, applied on Romanian SMEs managers. Findings - In a broad approach, for many managers of Romanian SMEs, strategic planning is a more organized way, a short term way, to profit from an opportunity or a threat that they face. Research limitations/implications - Although the research results were obtained from 131 respondents, for a better overview, similar research studies should be run to increase the respondents' database. Practical implications - This paper is the starting point for future research, in the process of creating a process/tool for choosing an appropriate marketing strategy, along with a human resource development solution for SMEs. Originality/value - The paper makes a research using information gathered from SMEs in different fields of activity and provides an overview of marketing practices within Romanian SMEs.