The Manager's View

Defining Potential Actions Having the right offerings that best meets the market needs at a price that is acceptable to customers and provides profitable cash flows for the organization requires a well thought out product assessment process. It is important to include a complete description of the product and the alternatives used in the comparison. The product description should include all tangible and intangible characteristics. Tangible characteristics would include size, weight, and other physical properties of the product. Intangible characteristics would include guarantees, customer service, and ease of understanding how to use the product or product training and so on. While tangible and intangible characteristics may be hard to capture it is an important exercise from the view of the customer. It helps understand the real job the customer has hired the company and its products to do. Clayton Christensen gives the example of milk shakes being us...

Over the years the leading marketing and management thinkers have developed theories that look for answers as to why companies failed after enjoying a period of tremendous success. Theodore Levitt attributed failures to the leaders of these companies being myopic and defining their business mission too narrowly. For example, railroads considering themselves as being in the railroad business rather than the transportation business was myopic and prevented them from entering into air transportation, shipping and trucking. Clayton Christensen developed the theories on disruptive innovations and suggested that, over time, industry-leading companies continued developing product enhancements that were driven by the most demanding and profitable customers. As a result a significant portion of customers not wanting or needing all of the product enhancements were vulnerable to attack from new companies offering less expensiv...

The chart below demonstrates the approach for developing a successful marketing strategy. The graphic suggests that a vision and mission should drive the price, place product and promotion marketing components and that once these 4 Ps are identified a strategy can be developed. It is interesting to ask which of the 4 P’s is most important.   To determine value of each of the four Ps requires a vision and mission statement that clearly defines the nature of a business, the market segment to be served and an idea of what success looks like. For my classes at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business I have used the example of an individual with a pressure washer and limited funds wishing to enter into the maintenance business and grow to be a major player in home and commercial maintenance. This individual might create a mission statement that as follows:   1) To make available quality exterior maintenance service to home and busin...

I have been involved in developing marketing strategies that required the developing a competitive advantage in markets filled with strong competitors. I have consistently found that developing solid information on the market and the competitors was critical in building a foundation for the strategy. Information Sources Gathering information on the market and the competition is readily available if you know where to look. Information on the market is available through census data, industry data and consumer research. Most of this is readily available on the Internet. Gathering data on the competition is also readily available.   Some of the information can be taken from financial reports if the competitor is a publicly traded company. These reports usually give key statistics, profiles of key managers and basic financial data. Information on competitors can also be gathered from customers, vendors and public records. Developing financial profiles of...