CHAPTER VI. EVALUATION AND CONTROL

Many unexpected incidents may occur when you implement marketing activities. 

The unexpected incidents may keep you from attaining the desired effects via the marketing plan. 

Thus, you need to evaluate and control the marketing actions as they unfold in order to obtain the desired outcomes.  Marketing control involves “evaluating the results of marketing strategies and plans and taking corrective action to ensure that objectives are attained”⁶.  

It is recommended that you include marketing evaluation and control strategies in the marketing plan for your park.  

You should have appropriate means to evaluate the outcomes that each marketing action produces. 

Without practical tools for evaluation, it is not possible to make effective decisions regarding your marketing plan. 

Thus, it is recommended that you include the tools to measure the success of your marketing actions in your marketing plan.  Evaluation tools may vary with the nature of each marketing objective and activity.

If your marketing objective is related to increasing the revenue to your park, you should assess the number of visitors to your park as a way to measure success.  Ticket sales and other sales revenue (e.g., lodging, souvenirs, and etc.) may be used as an effective indicator.

A marketing objective for your park may be more than just increasing the number of visitors to the park.  The national parks are important cultural and recreation resources that provide the visitors with considerable psychological benefits as well as health benefits. 

That is, your marketing objectives may be related to enhancing the quality of experience for the visitors.  A visitor survey is one of the most effective tools to collect responses from visitors. 

You can also assess visitor attitude changes (e.g., satisfaction and loyalty to your park) via survey.

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