Enrollment management, the authors suggested in earlier essays, is a deliberate process of achieving an institution's preferred enrollment profile, starting by identifying the strategic purposes and mission of the institution, and then orchestrating the marketing, recruitment, admissions, pricing and aid, retention programs, academic support services and program development required to achieve those outcomes. What is too often overlooked or perhaps not made explicit is that those aspirations and those preferred strategic futures can not be framed independent of the market context within which the institution exists. Enrollment management must begin by assessing the dynamics that create the competitive market context which in real and measurable ways prescribes and circumscribes the range of strategic futures an institution in all likelihood has to choose among. Understanding that marketplace is the prerequisite to all strategic enrollment planning; exploring that further is the purpose of this essay. (Contains 1 figure.)