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Competitive Strategy

1. The document discusses various competitive strategies for market leaders, challengers, followers, and niche players. 2. It outlines six types of defense strategies for market leaders, including position defense, flanking defense, preemptive defense, counteroffensive defense, mobile defense, and contraction defense. 3. It also describes five strategies that challengers can use, such as frontal attacks, flanking attacks, encirclement attacks, bypass attacks, and guerrilla attacks.

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177 views19 pages

Competitive Strategy

1. The document discusses various competitive strategies for market leaders, challengers, followers, and niche players. 2. It outlines six types of defense strategies for market leaders, including position defense, flanking defense, preemptive defense, counteroffensive defense, mobile defense, and contraction defense. 3. It also describes five strategies that challengers can use, such as frontal attacks, flanking attacks, encirclement attacks, bypass attacks, and guerrilla attacks.

Uploaded by

Sameer69
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Competitive Strategies

Prof. Arijit Bhattacharya


Hypothetical Market Structure
Broad Market Leader Strategies
1.Expand total market 2.Expand market
New customers share
• Non users (market
penetration) 3.Defend market
• New market segment share
• Geographical expansion
Existing customers
• More Usage (Moov)
New and existing customers
• New uses (CDM)
Six Types of Defense Strategies
1.Position Defense
• Occupying the most desirable market space in
the minds of the consumers

• Setting up barriers to market entry around a


– product
– brand
– product line
– market segment
• Google
2. Flanking Defense
• Market leader tries to protect a unguarded or
weakly guarded market

• Product flanking
– Multibranding strategy
Multiband Strategy
Soaps & Detergents

Premium
Dove Surf, Ariel

Mid range
Lux, Liril Sunlight,Rin, Tide

Economy
Lifebuoy, Hamam Wheel,Ghari, Fena
3.Preemptive Defense
• Detect potential attacks and attack the enemies
first.
• Product/brand proliferation to signal not to
attack
• Vaporware
4.Counteroffensive Defense
• Responding to competitors’ head-on attack by
identifying the attacker’s weakness and then
launch a counter attack.
5.Mobile Defense
• The leader stretches its domain over new
territories.
– Market broadening
– Market diversification
• Netflix, Amazon
6.Contraction Defense
• Withdraw from the most vulnerable segments
and redirect resources to those that are more
defendable.
• Planned contraction or strategic withdrawal.
• TATA group sold TOMCO (soaps and
detergents unit) to Unilever.
Market Challenger Strategies
1.Challenger-Frontal Attack
• Challenger has to be rich both in resources and
capabilities.
• Price war
• Pepsi Challenge
2.Challenger-Flanking Attack
• Challenger attacks the leader at his weak point
or blind spot.
• Geographical flanking
– Spot underperforming areas
• Segmented flanking
– Challenger attacks market segment/areas of
technology neglected by leaders
3.Challenger-Encirclement Attack
• Surrounding a competitor with several brands
and forcing it to defend itself on many fronts at
the same time.
• Type
– Product encirclement
– introduces products with many different qualities,
styles, and features that overwhelm the
competition's product line.
4.Challenger-Bypass Attack
• Bypassing the leader to attack easier markets.
Indirect attack.
– Diversifying into unrelated products
– Diversifying into new geographical markets
• Regional brands
– New technologies
• Google vs. Yahoo
• ITC (FMCG)
5.Challenger-Guerrilla Attack
• Made up of series of small, intermittent hit-
and-run attacks by a challenger to harass and
destabilize the market defender.
• Objective
– Keep the leader busy in putting out small bush
fires so that overall strategic focus wanes
– 1996 ICC world cup: Pepsi vs. Coke
• Not a long term strategy
Market Follower Strategies
1. Counterfeiter
– Copies leader’s product and packages and sells it on
the black market.
2. Cloner
– Copies the leader’s products as it is as well as name,
packaging with slight variations
3. Imitator
– Copies some things from leader but differentiated on
packaging, advertising, pricing or location
4. Adapter
– Takes leader’s products and adapts or improves them
Market-Nicher Strategies
1. End-user specialist (value added
reseller)
2. Customer size specialist
3. Specific customer specialist
4. Geographic specialist
5. Product/Product line specialist
6. Job-shop specialist (parts
manufacturer)
7. Quality-Price specialist
8. Service specialist
9. Channel specialist

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