Offensive marketing warfare strategies

In marketing and strategic management, marketing warfare strategies are a type of marketing strategy that uses military metaphor to craft a businesses strategy. See marketing warfare strategies for background and an overview. Offensive marketing warfare strategies are a type of marketing warfare strategy designed to obtain an objective, usually market share, from a target competitor. In addition to market share, an offensive strategy could be designed to obtain key customers, high margin market segments, or high loyalty market segments.
[edit] Fundamental Principles

There are four fundamental principles involved:

   1. Assess the strength of the target competitor. Consider the amount of support that the target might muster from allies. Choose only one target at a time.
   2. Find a weakness in the target’s position. Attack at this point. Consider how long it will take for the target to realign their resources so as to reinforce this weak spot.
   3. Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible. Whereas a defender must defend all their borders, an attacker has the advantage of being able to concentrate their forces at one place.
   4. Launch the attack quickly. The element of surprise is worth more than a thousand tanks.

[edit] Types of offensive strategies

The main types of offensive marketing warfare strategies are:

    * Frontal Attack - This is a direct head-on assault. It usually involves marshaling all your resources including a substantial financial commitment. All parts of your company must be geared up for the assault from marketing to production. It usually involves intensive advertising assaults and often entails developing a new product that is able to attack the target competitors’ line where it is strong. It often involves an attempt to “liberate” a sizable portion of the target’s customer base. In actuality, frontal attacks are rare. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, they are expensive. Many valuable resources will be used and lost in the assault. Secondly, frontal attacks are often unsuccessful. If defenders are able to re-deploy their resources in time, the attacker’s strategic advantage is lost. You will be confronting strength rather than weakness. Also, there are many examples (in both business and warfare) of a dedicated defender being able to hold-off a larger attacker. The strategy is suitable when
          o the market is relatively homogeneous
          o brand equity is low
          o customer loyalty is low
          o products are poorly differentiated
          o the target competitor has relatively limited resources
          o the attacker has relatively strong resources
    * Envelopment Strategy (also called encirclement strategy) - This is a much broader but subtle offensive strategy. It involves encircling the target competitor. This can be done in two ways. You could introduce a range of products that are similar to the target product. Each product will liberate some market share from the target competitor’s product, leaving it weakened, demoralized, and in a state of siege. If it is done stealthily, a full scale confrontation can be avoided. Alternatively, the encirclement can be based on market niches rather than products. The attacker expands the market niches that surround and encroach on the target competitor’s market. This encroachment liberates market share from the target. The envelopment strategy is suitable when:
          o the market is loosely segmented
          o some segments are relatively free of well endowed competitors
          o the attacker has strong product development resources
          o the attacker has enough resources to operate in multiple segments simultaneously
          o the attacker has a decentralized organizational structure
    * Leapfrog strategy -This strategy involves bypassing the enemy’s forces altogether. In the business arena, this involves either developing new technologies, or creating new business models. This is a revolutionary strategy that re-writes the rules of the game. The introduction of compact disc technology bypassed the established magnetic tape based defenders. The attackers won the war without a single costly battle. This strategy is very effective when it can be realized.
    * Flanking attack - This strategy is designed to pressure the flank of the enemy line so the flank turns inward. You make gains while the enemy line is in chaos. In doing so, you avoid a head-on confrontation with the main force.

Strategic management

Strategic management is a field that deals with the major intended and emergent initiatives taken by general managers on behalf of owners, involving utilization of resources, to enhance the performance of firms in their external environments.[1] It entails specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans, projects and programs. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards objectives. Recent studies and leading management theorists have advocated that strategy needs to start with stakeholders expectations and use a modified balanced scorecard which includes all stakeholders.

Strategic management is a level of managerial activity under setting goals and over Tactics. Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the field of Organization Studies. In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about "strategic alignment" between the organization and its environment or "strategic consistency." According to Arieu (2007), "there is strategic consistency when the actions of an organization are consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are with the market and the context." Strategic management includes not only the management team but can also include the Board of Directors and other stakeholders of the organization. It depends on the organizational structure.

    “Strategic management is an ongoing process that evaluates and controls the business and the industries in which the company is involved; assesses its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reassesses each strategy annually or quarterly [i.e. regularly] to determine how it has been implemented and whether it has succeeded or needs replacement by a new strategy to meet changed circumstances, new technology, new competitors, a new economic environment., or a new social, financial, or political environment.

market dominance

There are several ways of calculating market dominance. The most direct is market share. This is the percentage of the total market serviced by a firm or brand. A declining scale of market shares is common in most industries: that is, if the industry leader has say 50% share, the next largest might have 25% share, the next 12% share, the next 6% share, and all remaining firms combined might have 7% share.

Market share is not a perfect proxy of market dominance. The influences of customers, suppliers, competitors in related industries, and government regulations must be taken into account. Although there are no hard and fast rules governing the relationship between market share and market dominance, the following are general criteria:

    * A company, brand, product, or service that has a combined market share exceeding 60% most probably has market power and market dominance.
    * A market share of over 35% but less than 60%, held by one brand, product or service, is an indicator of market strength but not necessarily dominance.
    * A market share of less than 35%, held by one brand, product or service, is not an indicator of strength or dominance and will not raise anti-competitive concerns by government regulators.

Market shares within an industry might not exhibit a declining scale. There could be only two firms in a duopolistic market, each with 50% share; or there could be three firms in the industry each with 33% share; or 100 firms each with 1% share. The concentration ratio of an industry is used as an indicator of the relative size of leading firms in relation to the industry as a whole. One commonly used concentration ratio is the four-firm concentration ratio, which consists of the combined market share of the four largest firms, as a percentage, in the total industry. The higher the concentration ratio, the greater the market power of the leading firms.

Alternatively, there is the Herfindahl index. It is a measure of the size of firms in relation to the industry and an indicator of the amount of competition among them. It is defined as the sum of the squares of the market shares of each individual firm. As such, it can range from 0 to 10,000, moving from a very large amount of very small firms to a single monopolistic producer. Decreases in the Herfindahl index generally indicate a loss of pricing power and an increase in competition, whereas increases imply the opposite.

Marketing strategies

Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental underpinning of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives.[2] Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results. Commonly, marketing strategies are developed as multi-year plans, with a tactical plan detailing specific actions to be accomplished in the current year. Time horizons covered by the marketing plan vary by company, by industry, and by nation, however, time horizons are becoming shorter as the speed of change in the environment increases.[3] Marketing strategies are dynamic and interactive. They are partially planned and partially unplanned. See strategy dynamics.

Marketing strategy involves careful scanning of the internal and external environments which are summarized in a SWOT analysis.[4] Internal environmental factors include the marketing mix, plus performance analysis and strategic constraints.[5] External environmental factors include customer analysis, competitor analysis, target market analysis, as well as evaluation of any elements of the technological, economic, cultural or political/legal environment likely to impact success.[3][6] A key component of marketing strategy is often to keep marketing in line with a company's overarching mission statement.[7]

Once a thorough environmental scan is complete, a strategic plan can be constructed to identify business alternatives, establish challenging goals, determine the optimal marketing mix to attain these goals, and detail implementation.[3] A final step in developing a marketing strategy is to create a plan to monitor progress and a set of contingencies if problems arise in the implementation of the plan.

Customer orientation

A firm within the market economy survives by manufacturing product that persons are willing and able to get. Consequently, ascertaining shopper demand is important for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern. several firms nowadays have a client focus (or market orientation). this means that the corporate focuses its activities and product on shopper demands. Generally, there are 3 ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the market modification identification approach and therefore the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, shopper desires are the drivers of all strategic promoting selections. No strategy is pursued till it passes the take a look at of shopper analysis. each facet of a market providing, together with the character of the merchandise itself, is driven by the wants of potential shoppers. The place to begin is usually the patron. The rationale for this approach is that there's no reason to pay R&D funds developing product that individuals won't get. History attests to several product that were industrial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.[12]

A formal approach to the current customer-focused promoting is thought as SIVA[13] (Solution, data, Value, Access). this technique is essentially the four Ps renamed and reworded to supply a client focus. The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer-centric different to the well-known 4Ps provide facet model (product, price, placement, promotion) of promoting management.

Product         → resolution
Price         → price
Place         → Access
Promotion → data

If any of the 4Ps were problematic or weren't within the promoting issue of the business, the business can be in bother and therefore different firms could seem within the surroundings of the corporate, therefore the shopper demand on its product can decrease.

Positive market segmentation

Market segmenting is dividing the market into groups of individual markets with similar wants or needs that a company divides into distinct groups which have distinct needs, wants, behavior or which might want different products & services. Broadly, markets can be divided according to a number of general criteria, such as by industry or public versus private. Although industrial market segmentation is quite different from consumer market segmentation, both have similar objectives. All of these methods of segmentation are merely proxies for true segments, which don't always fit into convenient demographic boundaries.

Consumer-based market segmentation can be performed on a product specific basis, to provide a close match between specific products and individuals. However, a number of generic market segment systems also exist, e.g. the system provides a broad segmentation of the population of the United States based on the statistical analysis of household and geodemographic data.

The process of segmentation is distinct from positioning (designing an appropriate marketing mix for each segment). The overall intent is to identify groups of similar customers and potential customers; to prioritize the groups to address; to understand their behavior; and to respond with appropriate marketing strategies that satisfy the different preferences of each chosen segment. Revenues are thus improved.

Improved segmentation can lead to significantly improved marketing effectiveness. Distinct segments can have different industry structures and thus have higher or lower attractiveness