The growth strategy—and corresponding marketing strategy—of a company has a lot to do with the nature of its industry. When a new market is developed or discovered, we say there is a blue ocean—an unmet demand in a market that isn’t served or is vastly underserved. Market share and sales can be increased by simply letting consumers know that a product or service exists and convincing them that they want the product. By contrast, in a red ocean, the market and the major players are already established, and the market is saturated. The only way to increase market share is to take market share from a competitor. That can be exceedingly difficult to do. Continue reading “What Beer Companies Can Teach Us About the Dangers of Publicly Attacking Competitors”
Tag: competitive strategy
Your Buyers Have Power: Maybe More Than You Think!
In 1979, Michael Porter, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, developed what would become known as Porter’s Five Forces, a framework intended as a tool for determining the attractiveness of certain industries based on the level of competition within those industries. The five forces — threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, supplier power, buyer power and competitive rivalry — collectively determine the degree of competitiveness within an industry. We’ve written about the framework as a whole. Now we’re looking at each force in depth. Today, we look at buyer power. Continue reading “Your Buyers Have Power: Maybe More Than You Think!”