MARKETING STRATEGY

SESSION -1
Dr. R.VENKATESH
ALLIANCE UNIVERSITY
PGP 2010-12
Sun Tze on Strategy

 “Know your enemy, know yourself, and

your victory will not be threatened.
Know the terrain, know the weather, and
your victory will be complete.”
 WHAT IS STRATEGY

 Strategy in a firm is the pattern of

objectives, goals and essential policies to
achieve the stated goals in such a way as to
define what business the company is in or is
to be in .
The Role of Strategy in Corporation

Corporate Strategy:
Mission & •Corporate Operatin
Objectives •Business g Plans
•Functional
 Corporate strategy seeks to unify all
business lines of a company and point them
toward an overall goal.
 Business strategy focuses on defining the
manner of competition in a given industry
or product/market segment.
 What is strategic planning
 Strategy specifies direction. A strategic statement
includes the description of new competitive
equilibrium to be created, the cause and effect of
relationships that will bring it about, and the logic
to support the course of action.
 A strategic plan specifies the sequence and timing
of steps that will alter competitive relationships
 Strategic planning scorecard
 Is our planning really strategic
 Do our plans leave room to explore strategic alternatives
 Do we have time and incentive to investigate truly
important things
 Have we ever seriously evaluated a new approach to an old
market
 Do our plans critically document and examine strategic
assumptions
 Do we consistently make an attempt to examine consumer,
competitor, and distributor responses to our programmes?
 MARKETING STATEGY

 Marketing Strategy is an endeavor by a

Corporation to differentiate itself positively
from its competitors using its relative
corporate strengths to better satisfy
customer needs in a given environmental
setting.
 Marketing strategy (contd..)

“Marketing Strategy is a series of

integrated actions leading to a
sustainable competitive advantage.”

John Scully
Key Elements of Marketing Strategy
Formulation
 The strategic 3 Cs
– Customers, Competitors & the Corporation
 Environment analysis -- PEST
  Strategic Marketing Decisions
– Where to compete
– How to compete
– When to compete
 Three 3 Cs of Marketing Strategy

 Customer

 Competition

 Corporation
 What is Competitive
Advantage?
 “Competitive advantage is a company’s
ability to perform in one or more ways
that competitors cannot or will not
match.” Philip Kotler
 “If you don’t have a competitive
advantage, don’t compete.”
Jack Welch, GE
 Other Characteristics of
Competitive Advantage
 Substantiality
– Is it substantial enough to make a difference?
 Sustainability
– Can it be neutralized by competitors quickly?
 Ability to be leveraged into visible business
attributes that will influence customers

(Source: Strategic Marketing Management, Aakers)

 Seeking Competitive
Advantages
 Positions of advantage
– Superior customer value
– Lower relative total cost
 Performance advantages
– Customer satisfaction, Loyalty, Market Share,
Profit
 Sources of advantages
– Superior skills & knowledge, Superior resources,
Superior business process
 Left-handed and right handed
organization and their strategies
 Left-handed organizations are financially driven
and work with financial plan, ROI, cost , expenses
debt and assets.
 Right-handed organization are market driven with
the primary focus of satisfying the customers. The
business decisions flow back from an
understanding of customers rather than from a
financial requirement.
Strategic Review Process
 Challenges of the next
millennium
 Decline of mega-brands as the result of
attacks from low-branded and low priced
competitors.
 Disappearance within many organizations
of staff marketing departments and
emergence of more focused functions with
specific line responsibilities
 Decline in the demand of certain specialist
marketing skills, including collection and
analysis of data.
 Emergence of GENX consumers who
demand a far high value added offer.
 Markets which are characterized by infinitely
more aggressive and desperate levels of
competition.
 Emergence of new markets and
segmentation and rapid increase in new
product innovations.
 European integration and growing power of
distribution channels
 All these factors (challenges) have resulted
in need of managers revisiting the
traditional terms and practices of marketing
by asking themselves the following
questions.
 Questions that modern day
marketers should ask themselves
 Is marketing and its focus on meeting and
anticipating customer needs is still a widely
accepted business philosophy?
 Are the strategies focused on creating value
to all stakeholders and customer satisfaction?
 Is marketing function integrated with other
functions of the organization as a part of
value creating strategy?
 Is the Marketing strategy global in scope?
 Does significant part of the marketing effort
constitute innovative practices not previously
used by the organisation and its competitors?
 Are strategic alliances for co-marketing
activities being formed and are marketing
strategies based on the development of long
term relationships with the clients?
 Thank You