This marketing academic research paper discusses the evolution of marketing strategies over the years and how corporations have modified their strategies to counter various threats in the environment.
The paper explores the use of military strategy ideas to help businesses formulate effective marketing strategies for the new millennium.
The paper analyzes various attack and defense strategies that businesses can use to win market share and counter competition.
- Title: Marketing Strategies in the New Millennium: A Review
- Author: Rajib Dasgupta
The attack strategies include frontal attack, flanking attack, encirclement attack, bypass attack, and guerrilla attack:
- A frontal attack: is when an aggressor masses its forces right up against those of its opponent. It attacks the opposition's strengths rather than its weaknesses.
- A flanking attack: involves identifying and claiming new market segments and niches.
- Encirclement attack: involves launching a grand offensive against the enemy on several fronts so that the enemy must protect his front, sides, and rear simultaneously.
- Bypass attack: is the most indirect of the assault strategies, which offers two lines of approach: diversifying into unrelated products or diversifying into new geographical markets for existing products.
- Guerrilla attack: consists of making small, intermittent attacks on different territories of the opponent, with the aim of harassing and demoralizing the opponent and eventually securing concessions.
While the defense strategies include position defense, mobile defense, preemptive defense, flank-positioning defense, counter-offensive defense, and hedgehog defense:
- Position Defense: Traditional concept of defense, closely tied to a psychology of 'fortification'.
- Mobile Defense: Firm attempts to stretch its domain over new territories that can serve as future centers for defense of counter-attack.
- Preemptive Defense: Attacking the competitor before the competitor can attack the firm.
- Flank-Positioning Defense: Positioning the firm in a way that makes it difficult for the competitor to attack.
- Counter-Offensive Defense: Launching a counter-attack against the competitor.
- Hedgehog Defense: Focusing on a narrow market segment and becoming the best in that segment.
- The paper suggests that successful marketing requires devising competition-centered strategies, and not just customer-centered and distribution-centered strategies.
- The company must still be good at 'finding needs and filling them', but now it must also know how to out-manoeuvre its competitors in the same task.
- Understand the evolution of marketing strategies over the years and how corporations have modified their strategies to counter various threats in the environment.
- Analyze various attack and defense strategies that businesses can use to win market share and counter competition.
- Devise competition-centered strategies, and not just customer-centered and distribution-centered strategies.
- Use military strategy ideas to help formulate effective marketing strategies for the new millennium.
