Paper Topic:

Your Competitive Marketing Strategy

Your Competitive Marketing Strategy

The competitive marketing strategy serves one main goal , the creation of a competitive advantage that will help sales of the company . The management has to approach the creation of such a strategy from the point of view of the company 's strengths and weaknesses . The strategy has to be unique as each company possesses a unique combination of strengths and has to cope with an individual set of problems . Thus , in my view , the key to the development and implementation of a competitive marketing strategy has to be

uniqueness , thus , the strategy has to be custom-made

For this reason , the formulation of competitive marketing strategy should only happen after careful analysis of the company 's external and internal environment . It is possible that the company that has been in the market for a long time has lost realization of what is going on around and inside . For example , once the company was innovative and a leader in change , but now it faces a challenge from its smaller competitors who are trying to innovate at a faster rate . Alternatively the management may not know what employees think of them , their work conditions and the potential of their business

Thus , the company needs to evaluate what is going on before making a decision on the strategy . At the same time , one should perform just as much analysis as is necessary to act - otherwise , the company may get bogged down in studying all sorts of environments while time is lost for action

Most importantly , the company has to review strategies used by competitors and try to come up with something of their own . For instance , one should be aware of generic competitive strategies used by most companies . Porter defines them as cost leadership differentiation and focus (Douglass , Rhee 1989 . These strategies differ on two basic dimensions , namely the scope of the target market i .e , broad-line vs segment focus , and the strategic competitive advantage , i .e , lowest cost position vs perceived product differentiation (Douglass , Rhee 1989 . This means that the company has to make two basic decisions : Will it market to a narrow segment or use mass marketing ? Will it try to get ahead of its competition by offering lower price or by differentiating their product from the rest ? Without these two basic decisions , the company cannot continue to map out their strategy because they will be lost on details without basic guidelines Porter indicated that the firm must choose either product differentiation or the lower price because attempting to pursue simultaneous competitive advantages will result in "strategic mediocrity " except for firms in unusual industry niches (Flynn , Flynn 1996

Thus , the company has to evaluate its strengths and decide where it can have the greatest advantage - by lowering prices or by differentiating the product from the competition . However , the greatest mistake is to think that the company can do this analysis once and forever . In contrast , the company has to continue with this analysis so as to make its...

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