Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Strategy ................................................................................................................................................... 2
Marketing Strategy ................................................................................................................................. 2
Components of a Strategy(SORSS) .......................................................................................................... 2
Levels of Strategy .................................................................................................................................... 3
The marketing plan ................................................................................................................................. 4
Situation Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 5
Formulation of a strategy ....................................................................................................................... 5
The Balance score card model of SWOT analysis ................................................................................... 6
The product Matrix ................................................................................................................................. 6
Corporate Strategy Decisions ................................................................................................................. 6
The Ansoff Matrix ................................................................................................................................... 7
The BCG Matrix(Growth-Share Matrix) .................................................................................................. 8
GE/McKinsey Matrix(Business Position Matrix) ..................................................................................... 9
SBU Level Strategy ................................................................................................................................ 10
Michael porter’s generic strategy ......................................................................................................... 10
Robert Miles and Charles Snow ............................................................................................................ 11
7 Domain of market attractiveness ...................................................................................................... 11
Strategy
A strategy is a fundamental pattern of present and planned objectives, resource allocation
and interaction of the organisation with market, competitors and other external
environmental factors.
Marketing Strategy
It is the overall game plan of a business of reaching people and convert them into customers
rather, loyal customers and apostles.
A marketing strategy contains a lot of information about the company, its past
performance and future plans, its value proposition, key marketing messages, information
about target segment, product launches and other high-level elements that are crucial to the
company. It plays a crucial role in development of a marketing plan. However, a marketing
strategy should always be of long lifespan than an individual marketing plan because a
marketing strategy preaches the value proposition and key elements of a company’s brand
which shouldn’t change often.
Components of a Strategy(SORSS)
1. Scope: It refers to the breadth of the strategic domain of an organisation i.e. number
of industries, types of industries, location of industries, product lines, existing and
potential market segment. It should reflect the managements view of the firm’s
purpose or mission.
2. Goals and Objectives: A strategy should include the desired level of accomplishments
in various dimensions of performance such as volume growth, profit, ROI, brand
equity with various products in various markets.
3. Resource Deployment: Resources such as Land, Labour and Money are always limited.
Hence, a proper allocation of resources across businesses, markets, products and
functions is needed
4. Sustainable competitive advantage identification: The company has to compete and
sustain in the market. For this the managers must be able to identify the distinctive
competencies, relative strengths of the business which will act as an advantage in
competing with the competitor and sustaining in the market and are difficult to
replicate. These competencies are called sustainable competitive advantages.
5. Synergy: Synergy exists when a firm’s businesses, markets, products, resources and
competencies reinforce one another so that the total performance of the firm as a
whole is greater than their individual performances. Synergy can be knowledge based,
corporate based, or resource based.
Levels of Strategy
Strategy is at the heart of business. A good strategy and a proper implementation of it, can
make your business rise above others. If any of the two goes wrong, the business will
experience a fall. Given below are the 3 levels of strategies generally used by businesses. Only
when all three of these levels are carefully considered and implemented, your business will
be able to get on and sustain on the right path towards a prosperous future
A. Corporate Strategy
B. SBU Level Strategy
C. Functional Level Strategy
Corporate Strategy
Strategy
Accounting/Control
R&D Strategy
Strategy
Unlike a typical business plan, marketing plan is dynamic in nature i.e. it changes and evolves
with your business, its need, trends and external environment. The main function of a marketing plan
is to act as a roadmap that guides you in reaching your business objectives.
Gives you clarity about who your market and customer are
Helps you craft marketing messages that speak directly to the market which you
cannot afford to be improper or not in line with strategy
Helps you determine the best of all available marketing platforms and methods
available for your business
Situation Analysis
Targeted customer segment
Competitive Advantage
Pricing & Positioning
Distribution Plan
SWOT Analysis
Before developing a marketing strategy, it is very important that you conduct a situation analysis. It is
an essential part of any business or marketing plan and should be reviewed periodically because
situations change dynamically.
A situation analysis defines the internal and external factors of a company and clearly
identifies the capabilities, existing and potential customer, external & internal business environment
and their impact on the organisation’s business. It can also help in identifying Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats to the business and can act as an eye opener to what is going on and what
should be the next step of the company. Following factors should be taken into consideration while
doing a situation analysis. (PCDES)
1. Product Situation
What’s the current product
What are my core products and what are secondary/supportive products?
Makes you able to relate back to the client/customer’s need
2. Competitive Situation
Analyse your main competitors
Ask questions about the competitors- Who are they, what are their
competitive advantages etc.
3. Distributive Situation
Review your distribution system- style, scope, criticality etc
4. Environmental Factors
A PESTLE analysis
5. SWOT Analysis
Formulation of a strategy
Particular S W O T
Finance
Consumer
Employee
Shareholder
The Ansoff matrix is a strategic planning tool that provides a framework to help managers make
strategies for future growth. Its named after Igor Ansoff who came up with this concept. He describes
four growth alternatives
4. Diversification Strategies
Vertical (Fwd/back integration)
Concentric(Related) Diversification
Conglomerate(Unrelated) Diversification
Cash flow
1. Dogs: divesting
2. Question Marks: may turn into a star and then cash cow, or may turn into a dog
3. Stars: if able to maintain large market share when growth slows, can convert into a cash cow
4. Cash cows: Leaders in mature markets, greater ROI, generate more than they consume
GE multifactorial analysis is a technique used in brand marketing and product management to help a
company decide what product(s) to add to its product portfolio and which opportunities in the market
they should continue to invest in. It is conceptually similar to BCG analysis, but somewhat more
complicated. Like in BCG analysis, a two-dimensional portfolio matrix is created. However, with the
GE model the dimensions are multi factorial. This model aims to evaluate the existing portfolios of
strategic business units and to develop strategies to achieve growth by addition of new products and
businesses to this portfolio and further, to analyze which business units to invest in and which ones to
sell off.
The GE matrix is constructed in a 3x3 grid with Market Attractiveness plotted on the Y-axis
and business strength on the X-axis, both being measured on a high, medium, or low score. Five steps
must be considered in order to formulate the matrix:
Factors to determine how strong a particular unit are including but not limited to market share,
market growth, brand equity, profit margins, etc. After you have measured the strength of all
business units, you need to plot them in these 9 cells
Grow/Invest: high market share, best ROI and investment is strongly recommended
Hold: ambiguous about performance and investment should be done only if money is left after
investing in other profitable units.
Harvest/Divest: here investment should be made if the unit is giving a better ROI, because the units
in these cells are having a poor performance in an unattractive industry. If ROI is not good its better
to liquidate such units
SBU Level Strategy
SBU: A strategic business unit, popularly known as SBU, is a fully-functional unit of a business that
has its own vision and direction. Typically, a strategic business unit operates as a separate unit, but it
is also an important part of the company. It reports to the headquarters about its operational status.
In this type of strategy, you focus on your sustainable competitive advantage to provide value to
your customer.
The greatest risk in pursuing a cost leadership strategy is that these resources are not unique to you
and hence won’t act as a competitive advantage forever. One way of adopting this strategy is by use
of kaizens i.e. continuous improvement.
Differentiation Strategy
Differentiation involves making your products or services different from and more attractive than
those of your competitors. How you do this depends on the exact nature of your industry and of the
products and services themselves, but will typically involve features, functionality, durability,
support, and also brand image that your customers value.
Large organizations pursuing a differentiation strategy need to stay agile with their new product
development processes. Otherwise, they risk attack on several fronts by competitors pursuing Focus
Differentiation strategies in different market segments.
It rests on the choice of a narrow competitive scope within an industry. The focuser selects a
segment or groups of segments in the industry and tailors its strategy to serving them to the
exclusion of others. This strategy has two variants
1. Prospector: focus on growth through development of new products and markets e.g. 3M
2. Defender: Concentrates on maintaining current market share while paying less attention to
new product development
3. Analyser: Attempt to maintain a strong position in its core product-market and seek to
expand into new product markets
4. Reactor: Businesses with no clearly defined strategy, hence don’t succeed
Mullins' Seven Domains Model helps you explore the impact of seven key factors – or "domains" –
on your business
1. Market Domain/Macro Level : Market Attractiveness
Realistically, it's unlikely that your venture will meet the needs of everyone in the market.
You'll be more successful if you target your idea at one market sector or segment , and aim to meet
its needs fully. Hence the questions asked will be which segments are going to be benefitted and
how. What are the trends this segment is showing. What are the other market segments you could
access if you are successful in this one.
Here you look at how attractive the industry you are in is. To understand this you need to
know the competition, the industry and then suppliers and buyers.
How your company can have a USP. How can you identify your sustainable competitive
benefits over your competitors.
In this domain, located in the center of the model, you're going to analyze commitment –
yours, and that of your team – to this idea.
6. Team Domain: Ability to Execute on Critical Success Factors(CSFs)
You now need to identify the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for the business and think
realistically about whether your team can deliver on these.
This last domain is all about your connections and how important they are to the success of your
business.
The model was originally created for entrepreneurs, but you can use this model in existing
organizations to decide whether to pursue a new product idea or market expansion.
Blue ocean Strategy: Lasting success comes not from battling with your competitors but from
creating untapped new market growths i.e. by creating blue oceans
Red ocean strategy: Cut throat competition e.g. Indian smart phone market
High
Blue
ocean
Offering
level
Red
ocean