expectations clear e letting workers know what they are expected to do and how they will be

evaluated under the new strategy. Achieving fair process ensures that workers will trust and
commit to cooperating voluntarily with the new strategy.
The brief last chapter asks a question I was curious about from the very beginning:
suppose that you found a blue ocean: what guarantees your competitors won’t follow you
there and quickly turn it red? The authors suggest firms can often retain a leading position
in the new market they have created and earn high profits because of barriers to imitation.
For example, other firms might not believe the new strategy is sensible; it may conflict
with their current image; the market might be a natural monopoly; proprietary patents
may be involved; the original firm might enjoy significant economies of scale and thus
low costs; in some cases network externalities exist which discourage competition;
imitation might require drastic changes that cannot be achieved quickly by others; and the
original firm’s drastic innovation may give it a lot of brand advertising and loyal customers,
an advantage that imitators may be unable to get. When, despite all these barriers, other
firms eventually enter the market and it becomes a red ocean, it is time to create a new blue
ocean elsewhere.
The book includes three appendices. The first (the longest and most interesting) describes
the evolution of the car, computer and movie theater industries, and how blue oceans were
created in them again and again over time. The other two appendices are brief and deal with
value innovation.
I enjoyed this book very much: it contains many interesting examples of real firms in
various industries that illustrate vividly the principles and ideas that the authors describe. Its
ideas are important, its arguments make sense, and it is easy to read. Moreover, the ideas are
useful for individuals as well as for firms and organizations: for example, analysing the
potential effect of different factors on results and adapting investment into each factor
accordingly can apply as much to individuals contemplating how to divide their time
between different tasks as to firms investing in competition factors. I would certainly
recommend the book to scholars, students and practitioners of strategy and management e
and I believe it can provide an interesting reading also for readers beyond these fields.

Ofer H. Azar
E-mail: azar@som.bgu.ac.il

doi:10.1016/j.lrp.2008.02.003

Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge

Nirmalya Kumar and Jan-Benedict Steencamp, Harvard Business School Press (2007), 336pp.,
$35.00
Reading the dust jacket review (‘The old days of packaging generic brands
in plain white wrapping. are long gone’), I thought this book might be too
oriented to the US perspective. Private Labels aren’t all like that, and more to
the point, if you come from the land of Marks and Spencer, Harrods and
Sainsbury, they never were. But my fears of a US dominated picture of what PL
is and how it works were soon allayed. Although it may at times seem to be
aimed at that market (as a warning of what is to come?), the authors put
forward a much wider appreciation and understanding of the genre,
abundantly illustrated with relevant examples. The accumulation of research
and experience they present makes this a must-read text for anyone involved
in the study or practice of branding as a retailer, but especially as a brand
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manufacturer. Book Reviews