Chapter Framework

01 02 03 04

Product Life
Marketing
Competitive Strategies Other Competitive Cycle (PLC)
Strategies at
for Market Leaders Strategies Marketing
Different Stages
Strategies

Expanding Total Market - Market-Challenger Four Stages of PLC

Demand Introduction Stage-
Strategies - Introduction
-New Customer - Growth
Pioneer Advantage
- General Attack Strategy
- More Usage - Maturity
(Frontal/Flank/ Encirclement/
• Additional Opportunities - Decline
to use the brand Bypass/ Guerilla Attack)
Growth Stage
• New ways to use the
brand Market-Follower Strategies
(Cloner/Imitator/ 3 Special
Protecting Market Share Adapter) Categories of PLC Maturity Stage
-Proactive Marketing -Style
- Defensive Marketing - Fashion
(Position/Flank/ Preemptive/
Market-Nicher Strategies
- Fad
Counteroffensive/ Decline Stage
Mobile/Contraction defense) -Eliminate Weak Products
- Harvest/divest

Increasing Market Share

Sensitivity: Internal
 Competitive Strategies
for Market Leaders
 Expanding total market
demand

 Protecting market share

 Increasing market share

Sample distribution
Sensitivity: Internal
 Expanding total market
demand
 New customers
 those who might use it but do not
(market-penetration strategy
 those who have never used it (new-
market segment strategy)
 or those who live elsewhere
(geographical-expansion strategy)
Sensitivity: Internal
 More Usage
 Amount (packaging or product
redesign)
 Frequency
 identifying additional opportunities
to use the brand in the same basic
way
 identifying completely new and
different ways to use the brand
 Protecting market share
o Responsive Marketing
o Anticipative Marketing &
o Creative Marketing

 Proactive Marketing Skills

 Responsive anticipation to see the writing on the wall, as when
IBM changed from a hardware producer to a service business
 Creative anticipation to devise innovative solutions
Responsive anticipation is performed before a given change, while reactive
response happens after the change takes place.

Sensitivity: Internal
 Protecting market share
 Defensive marketing

Sensitivity: Internal
 Increasing market share
Company should be aware of 4 factors:
• Possibility of provoking anti trust action
• Economic cost
• The danger of pursuing wrong marketing
activities
• The effect of increased market share on
actual and perceived quality

Sensitivity: Internal
 Market Challenger Strategies
Company should be aware of 4 factors:
• Frontal attack
• Flank attack
• Encirclement attack
• Bypass attack
• Guerilla attack

Sensitivity: Internal
 Market Follower Strategies
Followers must define a growth path, without inviting
competitive retaliation and ‘not rocking the boat’. Three
broad strategies available:
• Cloner: Emulates leader’s products, name, and packaging with slight
variations
• Imitator: Copies same thing from the leader but differentiates on
packaging, advertising, pricing, or location.
• Adapter: Takes the leader’s products and adapts or improves them. The
adapter may choose to sell to a different markets, but often grows into a
future challenger.
Counterfeiter, practicing unethical and illegal way,
duplicates leader’s product and packages and sell them on
the black market/ disreputable retailers.

Sensitivity: Internal
 Market Nicher Strategies
 Market leaders in a small market, or niche. Avoids
competing with larger firms, targets small markets of little/no
interest to the larger firms.
 Nicher achieves high margin, but mass marketer achieves
high volume
 Nichers have three tasks
o Creating niches
o Expanding Niches &

o Protecting niches

 The firm ‘stick to niching’, but not necessarily to its niche.

Multiple niching preferable to single niching, for increased
chances of survival.

Sensitivity: Internal
 Product Life-Cycle Marketing
Strategies
 A company’s
positioning and
differentiation strategy
must change as its
product, market, and
competitors change
over the PLC

Sensitivity: Internal
 Style, Fashion, And Fad Life
Cycles

Sensitivity: Internal
 Marketing Strategies:
Introduction Stage
 Pioneering advantages
 Recall of brand name
 Establishes product class attributes
 Captures more uses in middle of market
 Pioneering drawbacks
 Imitators can surpass innovators
 Once leadership is lost, it’s rarely regained

Sensitivity: Internal
 Marketing Strategies: Growth
Stage
 To sustain rapid market share growth now:
 Improve product quality and add new features
 Add new models and flanker products
 Enter new market segments
 Increase distribution coverage and enter new
distribution channels
 Shift from awareness and trial communications to
preference and loyalty communications
 Lower prices to attract the next layer of price-sensitive
buyers

Sensitivity: Internal
 Marketing Strategies: Maturity
Stage
Market modification
Sales Volume= Usage rate* user count

Product modification
• Quality improvement
• Feature improvement
• Style improvement

Marketing program modification

Modify non-product elements: price, distribution, communications

Sensitivity: Internal
 Marketing Strategies: Decline
Stage
 Eliminating Weak Products
 Harvesting (slow) and Divesting (fast)

Sensitivity: Internal
 Thank You

Sensitivity: Internal