Protecting Market Share
While trying to expand total market size, the dominant firm must actively defend its current business: Boeing against Airbus, and Google against Microsoft. How can the leader do so?
The most constructive response is continuous innovation.
The front-runner should lead the industry in developing new products and customer services, distribution effectiveness, and cost cutting. Comprehensive solutions increase competitive strength and value to customers so they feel appreciative or even privileged to be a customer as opposed to feeling trapped or taken advantage of.
Proactive Marketing
In satisfying customer needs, we can draw a distinction between re-sponsive marketing, anticipative marketing, and creative marketing. A responsive marketer finds a stated need and fills it. An anticipative marketer looks ahead to needs customers may have in the near future. A creative marketer discovers solutions customers did not ask for but to which they enthusiastically respond. Creative marketers are proactive market-driving firms, not just market-driven ones.
A company needs two proactive skills:
- responsive anticipation to see the writing on the wall, as when IBM changed from a hardware producer to a service business, and
- creative anticipation to devise innovative solutions.
Note that responsive anticipation is performed before a given change, while reactive response happens after the change takes place.
Defensive Marketing
Even when it does not launch offensives, the market leader must not leave any major flanks exposed. The aim of defensive strategy is to reduce the probability of attack, divert attacks to less-threatened areas, and lessen their intensity. A leading firm can use one of six defense strategies.
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