Whenever possible, smart marketers will take a ____ rather than ____ approach to the marketing environment. (Choose the best combination from the options below.)
A. reactive .. proactive
B. proactive .. reactive
C. offensive .. defensive
D. defensive .. offensive
E. overt .. covert
Answer: (B) Marketers could either try to actively manage the environment (proactive) or merely react to changes later (reactive). Successful companies always choose the former rather than the latter. Therefore, (B) is the best choice. None of the other choices can be generalized to all successful companies.