business strategies: a foundation for marketing program decisions chapter 9 mcgraw-hill/irwin...

Business Strategies: A

Foundation for Marketing Program

Decisions

Chapter 9

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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How Do Businesses Compete?

• Business strategies are primarily concerned with allocating resources across functional activities and product-markets to give the unit a sustainable advantage over its competitors.

• The unit’s core competencies and resources, together with the customer and competitive characteristics of its industry, determine the viability of any particular competitive strategy.

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• Generic business-level competitive strategies

– Strategies to gain and maintain competitive advantages (Michael Porter):

• Overall cost leadership• Differentiation• Focus

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– Strategies based on intended rate of product-market development (Robert Miles and Charles Snow): • Prospectors focus on growth through the

development of new products and markets. • Defenders concentrate on maintaining their

positions in established product-markets while paying less attention to new product development.

• Analyzers try to maintain a strong position in core product-market(s) but seek expansion into new product-markets.

• Reactors have no clearly defined strategy.

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Combined Typology of Business-Level Competitive Strategies

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– The combined typology describes six business strategies, and each of the strategic categories could be further subdivided.

– It classifies business strategies on two primary dimensions:• The unit’s desired rate of product-market

development (expansion).• The unit’s intended method of competing in its

established product-markets.

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• Do the same competitive strategies work for single-business firms and start-ups?

– The same set of generic strategies are just as appropriate for small firms as for business units within larger ones.

– In reality most entrepreneurial firms begin life as prospectors.

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• Do the same competitive strategies work for service businesses?

– Basically, services can be thought of as intangibles and goods as tangibles.

– The former can rarely be experienced in advance of the sale, while the latter can be.

– The framework used to classify business-level competitive strategies is equally valid for service businesses.

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• Do the same competitive strategies work for global competitors?

– Businesses that compete in multiple global markets almost always pursue one of the two types of analyzer strategy.

– A single SBU may need to engage in different functional activities across the various countries in which it competes.

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• Will the Internet change everything?– It will be harder for firms to differentiate

themselves on any basis other than low price.

– Strategies focused on differentiation will become less viable, while firms pursuing low-cost strategies will be more successful.

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– The Internet is primarily a communications channel. • While it facilitates the dissemination of

information, the goods and services themselves will continue to offer different features and benefits.

– The Internet will make it easier for firms to customize their offerings and personalize their relationships with their customers.

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• Differences in scope– The breadth and stability of a business’s

domain are likely to vary with strategies. – This can affect the variables the corporation

uses to define its various businesses. – Defender businesses tend to operate in

relatively well-defined, narrow, and stable domains where both the product technology and the customer segments are mature.

How Do Competitive Strategies Differ from One Another?

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– Prospector businesses usually operate in broad and rapidly changing domains where neither the technology nor customer segments are well established.

– Analyzer businesses usually have a well-established core business to defend, and often their domain is primarily focused on that business.


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• Differences in goals and objectives – Important performance dimensions:

– Effectiveness—the success of a business’s products and programs relative to those of its competitors in the market.

– Efficiency—the outcomes of a business’s programs relative to the resources used in implementing them.

– Adaptability—the business’s success in responding over time to changing conditions and opportunities in the environment.


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– It is very difficult for any SBU, regardless of its competitive strategy, to simultaneously achieve outstanding performance on even this limited number of dimensions.


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• Differences in resource deployments– Prospector—and to a lesser degree,

analyzer—businesses devote a relatively large proportion of resources to the development of new product-markets.

– Defenders focus the bulk of their resources on preserving existing positions in established product-markets.

– Resource allocations among functional departments and activities within the SBU also vary across businesses pursuing different strategies.

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• Differences in sources of synergy– The sharing of operating facilities and

programs may be an inappropriate approach to gaining synergy for businesses following a prospector strategy.

– Low-cost defenders should seek operating synergies that will make them more efficient.

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• Prospector strategy– Suited to unstable, rapidly changing

environments resulting from new technology, shifting customer needs, or both.

– Most successful prospectors are usually strong in two broad areas of competence:• R&D, product engineering, design, and other

functional areas that identify new technology and convert it into innovative products

• Marketing research, marketing and sales.

Deciding When A Strategy is Appropriate

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• Analyzer strategy– Appropriate for well-developed industries

that are still experiencing some growth and change.

– Analyzers are often not as innovative in new product development as prospectors.

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• Defender strategy– Appropriate for units with a profitable share

of one or more major segments in a relatively mature, stable industry.

– It works best in industries where:• The basic technology is not very complex.• It is well developed and unlikely to change

dramatically over the short term.

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– Differentiated defenders• A business must be strong in those functional

areas critical for maintaining its particular competitive advantages over time.

• Marketing is also important

– Low-cost defenders• Requires the business to be more efficient than

its competitors.• Efficiency and low price are the primary focus.

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• Product policies– These concern the breadth or diversity of

product lines, their level of technical sophistication, and the target level of product quality relative to competitors.

– For prospector businesses, policies encouraging broader and more technically advanced product lines than those of competitors should be positively related to performance.

How Different Business Strategies Influence Marketing Decisions

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• Product policies (cont.)– Differentiated defenders compete by offering

more or better choices to customers than do their competitors.

– Broad and sophisticated product lines are less consistent with the efficiency requirements of the low-cost defender strategy.

– Businesses can distinguish themselves on the quality of service they offer.

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• Pricing policies– Success in offering low prices relative to

those of competitors should be positively related to the performance of low-cost defender businesses.

– Differentiated defenders and prospectors seldom adhere to a policy of low competitive prices.

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• Distribution policies– A relatively high degree of forward vertical

integration is found among defender businesses, particularly differentiated defenders.

– Prospectors rely more heavily on independent channel members to distribute their products.

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• Promotion policies– High advertising and sales promotion

expenditures are likely to bear a positive relationship to the new product and share-growth success of prospector businesses.

– Differentiated defenders are primarily concerned with maintaining the loyalty of established customers by adapting to their needs and providing good service.

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• Promotion policies (cont.)– Low-cost defenders businesses are likely to

make relatively low expenditures as a percentage of sales on promotional activities.

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• Effective implementation of different business strategies requires:

– Different functional competencies and resources.

– Different organizational structures, decision-making and coordination processes, reward systems, and even personnel.

What If the Best Marketing Program for a Product Does Not Fit the Business’s Competitive Strategy?

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• In view of the implementation problems involved, some firms might form new prospector SBUs to pursue emerging technologies and industries rather than expecting established units to handle extensive new product development efforts.

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• As individual product-market entries gain successful positions in growing markets, some firms move them from the prospector unit that developed them into an existing analyzer or defender unit, or even into a newly formed SBU.

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• Some firms that are technological leaders in their industries may divest or license individual product-market entries as they mature rather than defend them in the face of increasing competition and eroding margins.

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Take-Aways

• Research suggests that a business is likely to achieve superior revenue growth, market share, and profitability when there is a good fit between its competitive strategy and the strategic marketing programs of its various product or service offerings.

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Take-Aways

• Business-level competitive strategies can be usefully categorized into:

– Prospector strategies focused on growth via the development of new products and markets;

– Defender strategies primarily concerned with defending strong positions in established markets; and

– Analyzer strategies, which are hybrids of the other two strategies.

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Take-Aways

• The generic competitive strategies described in the previous point apply equally well to services and physical products, single-product start-ups and multidivisional corporations, and global and domestic operations, and they are unlikely to change dramatically due to the rise of e-commerce.

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Take-Aways

• Because the various business-level strategies focus on different objectives and seek to gain a competitive advantage in different ways, marketing may play a different role under each of the strategies, and varying marketing actions may be called for.

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Take-Aways

• The marketing decision maker’s job is to develop a sound, evidence-based marketing strategy for his or her offering and to make a persuasive case for its support.

– If that strategy does not fit the objectives or available resources and competencies of the business unit in which the product is housed, top management may choose to move the product to a more amenable unit or require adjustments to the strategy.

business strategies: a foundation for marketing program decisions chapter 9 mcgraw-hill/irwin...

Documents

business strategies

competitive strategies

lowcost strategies

service businesses

various businesses

analyzer businesses

prospector businesses

defender businesses