In the spirit of the classical work of P. H. Rabinowitz on nonlinear
Schr"odinger equations, we prove existence of mountain-pass solutions and
least energy solutions to the nonlinear Schr"odinger-Poisson system
\begin{equation}\nonumber \left{\begin{array}{lll}
- \Delta u+ u + \rho (x) \phi u = |u|^{p-1} u, \qquad &x\in \mathbb R^3,
,,, -\Delta \phi=\rho(x) u^2,\ & x\in \mathbb R^3, \end{array} \right.
\end{equation} under different assumptions on $\rho: \mathbb R^3\rightarrow
\mathbb R_+atinfinity.Ourresultscovertherangep\in(2,3)$ where the
lack of compactness phenomena may be due to the combined effect of the
invariance by translations of a `limiting problem’ at infinity and of the
possible unboundedness of the Palais-Smale sequences. Moreover, we find
necessary conditions for concentration at points to occur for solutions to the
singularly perturbed problem \begin{equation}\nonumber
\left{\begin{array}{lll}
- \epsilon^2\Delta u+ u + \rho (x) \phi u = |u|^{p-1} u, \qquad &x\in \mathbb
R^3,
,,, -\Delta \phi=\rho(x) u^2,\ & x\in \mathbb R^3, \end{array} \right.
\end{equation} in various functional settings which are suitable for both
variational and perturbation methods.