An underdog strategy involves a small and, usually, young firm taking on a much larger competitor. It is often employed by an upstart company that doesn’t hesitate to get into a fight with much bigger opponents in order to break their monopoly and offer the market better products, lower prices, or both. The underdog enters a market dominated by established players that are portrayed as being somewhat bureaucratic, complacent, and unresponsive to customer needs. Firms following underdog strategy promise to offer an attractive alternative to what customers have been buying. Southwest Airlines, in its early years, is an example of a company that became an underdog in its fight against established competitors, as it offered the traveling public highly attractive prices and superior value. Southwest was ready to begin operations in 1967 but could not do so until 1971 due to time-consuming court battles initiated by Braniff and Texas International Continue reading
Modern Marketing Strategies
Ambush Marketing Strategies
What is Ambush Marketing? Ambush marketing occurred when a non-sponsor of an event attempted to pass itself off as an official sponsor. Ambush marketing is defined as the practice whereby another company, often a competitor, intrudes upon public attention surrounding the event, thereby deflecting attention toward themselves and away from the sponsors. In simple words, non-sponsors to gain benefits available only to official sponsors exploit ambush marketing. When a sponsor purchases a sponsorship program, he aims towards orchestrating public attention onto its company or brand. In a typical sponsorship arrangement the sponsor purchases the sponsorship property rights and uses support promotion to further draw public attention to its involvement. The practice whereby another company, often a competitor, intrudes upon public attention surrounding the event, thereby deflecting attention toward themselves and away from the sponsor, is now known as “ambush marketing.” The term ambush marketing was initially coined to describe the Continue reading
Green Strategies and Green Marketing Strategy Matrix
Industry green norms and potential green market size are key issues for companies looking to gain competitive advantage with green marketing. Companies should consider the likely size of green markets in its industry as well as how can they differ their green products or services from their competitor’s one’s before they take steps on going green. There are four types of green strategies: Lean Green, Defensive Green, Shaded Green and Extreme Green. Following Green Marketing Strategy Matrix illustrates the need for companies to identify their position in regards to substantiality of green market segments and differentiability of greenness in order to choose the right strategy to enter a green market. Promotions tools adopted by this strategy are rather quiet such as public relations versus mass advertising. The Shaded Green strategy puts some secondary emphasis on greenness in its more overt promotional efforts and also pursues green product development as well. Continue reading
Co-Branding – Meaning, Strategies and Benefits
Nowadays, one of the highly valued assets for a company are its brands, with branding being every company’s top priority. But it often costs the companies huge amount of money and takes them a long time to build their brand. Today’s market is suffering from a syndrome of sameness where all the products offered to the customers look very similar both in terms of sameness in the physical brand element and in the symbolic value proposition offered to the market. Thus it has become difficult to establish a unique position for new products with markets cluttered with competing brands. Even innovative differentiated products can be imitated quickly, leaving no strategic edge. As globalization phenomenon continues to elevate competition in the marketplace, product introduction has become highly fraught with risk. One reason of such risk is the incredibly high cost of building brands for a product and another is that firms Continue reading
Marketing Myopia – Definition, Causes, and Examples
Most of the major industries today were once considered as growth industry’s. However some of the industries that are on the rise up the mountain or undergoing a boom in business may very much be in the shadow of downfall. Other industries which are considered as veteran growth industries have in reality ceased to grow. In every case the reason for this stint is not because the market is impregnated, it is because of the failure of management as they have fallen prey to a phenomenon called ‘Marketing Myopia’. Defining Marketing Myopia ‘Marketing myopia’ is a term made up of two words: Marketing and Myopia which is used to describe the short sighted (myopic) approach adopted by organizations which often leads to their premature decay. The term was coined by ‘Theodore Levitt’ in a paper which was published in the Harvard Business Review in the year 1960. This paper has Continue reading
Sensory Branding
In today’s highly competitive global environment, companies, on a constant basis, have to find new ways to position their brands in consumers’ mind. No amount of advertising and sales promotions can do any good if a brand does not confer a distinctive benefit. Brands need to be geared up to provide a complete package of functional, sensory and emotional experiences. Touching and triggering all the five senses of the consumers–touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste — creates a compelling brand experience. The more multi-sensory appeal that a brand has, the higher is the number of sensory triggers activated and resultantly, higher the bonding between the brand and the consumer. Sensory branding attempts to foster a lasting emotional connect between the brand and the consumer, using a deliberate design and deployment of interaction with the senses. In brand communication, all the five senses need to be evoked to create optimum impact Continue reading