TABLE OF CONTENTS Marketing strategy aims to generate sustainable competitive advantage. The process is influenced by industry position, experience curves, value effects and other factors such as product life cycle. In any given market place, businesses must adopt defensive and attacking strategies. Such actions aim to maintain and/or increase market share. Organizations need to ensure their strategic position is relevant to current/future market conditions.
Chapter 7 outlined the basic principles of setting objectives. It is important to recognize that alternative methods of achieving objectives exist. The ability to identify and evaluate these alternatives forms the essence of strategy development. The goal is to obtain sustainable competitive advantage within predetermined markets. Figure 8.1 summarizes the process.
The notions of competitive advantage and marketing strategy are intrinsically linked. Competitive advantage is the process of identifying a fundamental and sustainable basis from which to compete. Ultimately, marketing strategy aims to deliver this advantage in the market place.
Porter (1980) identifies three generic strategies fundamental sources of competitive advantage. These are: cost leadership, differentiation and focus. Arguably, these provide a basis for all strategic activity and underpin the large number of marketing strategies available to the organization. Additionally, management needs to define the competitive scope of the business targeting a broad or narrow range of industries/customers (see Figure 8.2), essentially either operating industry-wide or targeting specific market segments. Each generic strategy is examined in...
